
Glass. 

Book__ 



^7*3 A 

THE ART 



EXTEMPORE SPEAKING. 

HINTS 

FOR 

THE PULPIT, THE SENATE, AND THE BAR. 



BY m/BATJTAIN", 

VICAR-GENERAL AND PROFESSOR AT THE SORBONNE, ETC., ETC. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. 



Sranir (Sbftiwr. 



LONDON: 

BOSWORTH AND HARRISON, 215, RESENT STREET. 
1859. 






LONDON : 
PRINTED BY G. J. PALMER, 27, LAMB'S CONDUIT STREET. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



The art of speaking with facility in public 
is apt to be considered by us rather as a 
gift of nature than a power to be acquired 
Debating societies exist, much business is trans- 
acted in public, and the clergy are now being 
called upon to abandon, at least occasionally, 
written discourses. A Manual or Treatise on 
the Art of Extempore Speaking is much to b^ 
desired, and the present translation has been 
undertaken, as containing much useful instruc- 
tion, which may be turned to advantage by 
many amongst us, who enjoy freedom of 
thought and liberty of speech in an unex- 
ampled degree. 



a 2 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Exposition of the Subject. — Definition of an Extempora- 
neous Speech . . . . .1 

CHAPTER II. 

The Qualifications necessary for Public Speaking . .10 

CHAPTER III. 

Mental Aptitudes for Public Speaking, capable of being 
acquired, or formed by study . . .41 

CHAPTER IV, 
Physical Qualities of the Orator, Natural and Acquired . 84 



VI CONTENTS. 



PART II. 



CHAPTER V. 

PA.GS 

Division of the Subject . . . .108 



CHAPTER VI. 
Preparation of the Plan . . . . US 

CHAPTER VII. 

Political and Forensic Speaking . . . .124 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Speaking from the Pulpit, and Teaching . .138 

CHAPTER IX. 

Determination of the Subject and Conception of the Idea of 
the Discourse . . . • .146 

CHAPTER X. 
Conception of the Subject. —Indirect Method . .155 

CHAPTER XL 
Conception of the Subject.— Indirect Method . . 162 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Formation and the Arrangement of Ideas . .176 



CONTENTS. Vll 

CHAPTER XIII. 

PAGE 

Arrangement of the Plan . . . .188 

CHAPTER XIV, 
Character of the Plan ... . 1P9 

CHAPTER XV. 
Final Preparation before Speaking . . . .206 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Final Intellectual Preparation . . . .208 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Final Moral Preparation , . . .218 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Bodily Preparation . . . . .229 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Discourse . . . . • .238 

CHAPTER XX. 
The Beginning, or Exordium . , . .240 

CHAPTER XXL 
Entrance into the Subject .... 247 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

PAGE 

The Developement . . . . .254 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
The Crisis of the Discourse .... 263 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
The Close of the Discourse, or Peroration . .280 

CHAPTER XXV. 
After the Discourse . . . . .287 



THE AET 



EXTEMPOBE SPEAKING. 



PART I. 



CHAPTER I. 

EXPOSITION OF THE SUBJECT. — DEFINITION OF 
AN EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEECH. 

Let us in the first place determine accurately 
the subject we propose to treat, in order that 
nothing may be expected from us beyond that 
which it is our wish and in our power to illus- 
trate. 

We have no intention of composing a trea- 
tise on eloquence. The world has had enougl^- 
on this subject since the time of Aristotle 
Cicero, Quintilian, Fenelon, and many others 

B 



2 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 

Works on rhetoric abound, and it appears 
scarcely necessary to produce a new one. 

It is not our intention to treat of the art of 
writing, or of reciting a discourse elaborated at 
leisure, and committed to memory. 

It is true, men may become great orators by 
writing speeches and reciting them well. 
Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon, and many 
others, are examples of this fact, and it is pos- 
sible in this manner to instruct the mind, to 
touch the feelings, and to persuade the hearer; 
thus realising the aim of all oratory. 

Our subject is confined within narrower 
limits to the art of speaking well, whether in 
the pulpit or in the professorial chair, at the 
bar or in deliberative assemblies. We shall 
therefore confine our attention solely to a dis- 
course, neither written nor learnt by heart, but 
improvised ; necessarily composed by the 
orator on the very moment of delivery, without 
any preparation or previous combination of 
phrases. Let us then determine, in the first 
place, what is an improvised (or extempore) 
speech, and the manner in which a speech is 
extemporised. 

Extemporisation implies speaking on the first 



STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 3 

impulse, on any subject presented to the mind, 
without a preliminary arrangement of phrases. 
It is the instantaneous manifestation of a 
thought ; the ready exposition of a mental im- 
pression. 

It is evident that the art of extemporising 
has reference only to the form of words, or the 
form of a discourse ; for, in order to speak, it 
is necessary to have something to say, and that 
something must already be existing in the 
mind, or still more deeply in the intimate feel- 
ing of the orator. Nevertheless, the thought 
or feeling may be in a concealed state, and the 
possessor may not have clearly appreciated or 
distinctly perceived it at the moment of open- 
ing his lips under the impression of some cir- 
cumstance or some unforeseen cause of excite- 
ment. 

Ideas and conditions of the mind cannot be 
elaborated at will ; and the more perfectly they 
are possessed or felt, the greater is the proba- 
bility of their lively expression, or of their being 
developed with force and clearness. 

We will not speak of those exceptional 
cases where a passion, involuntarily excited or 
aroused, bursts forth of a sudden in some sub- 

B 2 



4 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 

lime words, or with an eloquent harangue 
" Facit indignatio versum," says Juvenal. 

Every feeling unexpectedly aroused in an ex- 
cited mind may, like a volcano, scatter around 
burning lava, or, like a cloud charged with 
storms, produce thunder and lightning, with 
terrible and devastating hail. No advice can 
be given for such a situation, for nature alone 
furnishes the means referable to individual 
constitution and development. There lies the 
source af all poetry, of all eloquence, and of all 
artistic power. Improvisation such as this re- 
cognises no rules, and rejects teaching. The 
coarsest, the most ignorant man may thus occa- 
sionally be eloquent, if he feel vividly and 
express himself energetically, in words and 
gesture. 

We will devote our attention only to pre- 
pared extempore speaking, that is to say, to those 
addresses which have to be delivered in public 
before a specified auditory, on a particular 
subject, and with the view of achieving a certain 
result. 

It is true that in such cases the discourse, if 
written beforehand, can be recited or read. 
There are some persons who are masters of reci- 



STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 5 

tation or reading, and can thus produce a great 
effect. In this manner, doubtless, both thoughts 
and words can be bettter weighed, and the 
speaker can deliver what he has to say with 
greater precision. But there is this disadvan- 
tage, that the discourse is colder, less apposite, 
and approximates too nearly to dissertation. 
Nay, should any unforeseen circumstance occur, 
such as an objection, a rejoinder, or a discussion 
of any kind, the speaker not expecting it, may 
find himself at a loss, to the great detriment of 
his cause or his subject. Moreover, a preacher, 
a professor, or a senator, who is liable to be 
called upon to speak at any moment, has not 
always the time to compose a discourse, still 
less to learn it by rote. Therefore, in speaking 
from his fulness, as the saying is, he can speak 
oftener, and, if he speak well, may produce a 
great effect. 

His language will also be more forcible and 
brilliant, — more real and more apposite. Ori- 
ginating with the occasion, and at the very 
moment, it will bear more closely on the sub- 
ject, and strike with greater force and precision. 
His words will be warmer from their freshness; 
they will in this manner communicate increased 



6 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 

fervour to the audience, and will have all the 
energy of an instantaeous effort. 

The vitality of thought is singularly stimu- 
lated by this necessity of instantaneous produc- 
tion, by this actual necessity of self-expression, 
and of communication to other minds- It is 
an effort which engages the sympathy of 
hearers, who witness with lively interest this 
labour of mental life, by which an idea well 
conceived is brought to light, and presented in 
a graceful and well-constructed phraseology. 

But it is not our object to compare these 
two methods of public speaking, nor to place 
in the balance their advantages and defects. 
It is possible to excel in both ways, and 
every one must endeavour to discover the 
manner which best suits him, and the method 
by which, according to his nature, his qualities 
and his position, his words can achieve the 
greater amount of good, instruct more clearly" 
and more fully, and touch the heart more effec- 
tually. What suits one does not suit another. 
God distributes his gifts as seems best to 
Him ; and every tree bears fruit according to 
its kind. It is important for man to discover 
the gift he has received, to make use of it 



STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 7 

with usury, and to discharge faithfully his high 
vocation. " Fiunt oratores, nascuntur poetae," 
as said Quintilian; meaning, doubtless, that 
poetic genius is a gift from heaven, and that 
oratorical talent can be acquired. This is only 
half true ; for if teaching and labour can con- 
tribute to the formation of an orator, neither 
the one nor the other will give him the germ 
and the power of eloquence. They can excite 
and nourish, but they can never ignite the sacred 
fire. 

But amongst those who have received this 
divine gift of words some have only been 
enabled to exercise it with the pen, and occa- 
sionally even the most eloquent writers are 
incapable of delivering in public that which 
they are so well able to compose in private. 
They are troubled and embarrassed before 
the least imposing audience. Rousseau could 
never speak in public ; and the Abbe de 
Lamenais, whose style is so vigorous, never 
ventured to enter the pulpit, and w r as unable to 
address even a meeting of children. 

Others, on the contrary, possess the faculty 
of easily expressing in public their feelings and 
their thoughts. The presence of hearers stimu- 



8 STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. 

lates them, and augments the elasticity of their 
mind, and the vivacity of their tongue. It is 
these only that we shall address, for we have 
spoken in this manner through life and have 
never been able to do otherwise. Many a 
time, however, have we made the attempt, by 
preparing an exordium, a tirade, or a perora- 
tion, with the intention of speaking better or 
in a more striking manner. But we have 
never succeeded in reciting what we had pre- 
pared, and in the manner in which we had con- 
structed it. Our laboured compositions have 
always missed their object, and have made us 
embarrassed or obscure. Thus, it appears, we 
were made, and we have been forced to follow 
our nature. In such matters the lesson to be 
learnt is in turning to account the demands of 
nature which must be satisfied. 

As extemporising a speech regards the form 
only, as has been before stated, it follows 
that, before attempting to speak in this manner, 
two things are necessary. L The foundation 
of the discourse, or the thought and succession 
of thoughts to be expressed. 2. The means of 
expression, or the language in which our 
thoughts are to be conveyed, so as to avoid the 



STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT. B 

necessity of seeking the words at the moment 
the idea is conceived, and the risk of stopping 
short of or being embarrassed in the composition 
of the phraseology. In other terms, the speaker 
must know what he wishes to say and how to 
say it. 

Improvisation, therefore, supposes the special 
qualifications on which we are about to speak, 
not precisely with the view of teaching the 
means of acquiring them, as for the most part 
they are gifts of nature ; but to induce those to 
cultivate and develope them who have the good 
fortune to possess them ; and, above all, to 
point out the signs by which any one may dis- 
cover whether he be capable of speaking in 
public, and how, in so doing, to succeed. 



10 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 



CHAPTER IT. 

THE QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY FOR PUBLIC 
SPEAKING. 

At the root of every real talent, whatever it 
may be, there lies a natural aptitude, conferring 
on the person endowed with it a particular 
power ; and this aptitude depends alike on the 
intellectual temperament and the physical or- 
ganisation ; for man being essentially composed 
of mind and body, all that he does in reason, 
or in his quality as a reasonable thing, comes 
from these two portions of his being and from 
their mutual relations. The mind commands, 
it is true, and the body must obey like an 
instrument; but the instrument has also its 
influence, especially over the talent of the 
artist, by the manner in which it responds to 
his wishes, to his feelings, to the motions which 
he communicates to it, to the vigour which 
he seeks to display. Thus speaking is an 
art, and the finest of arts ; it should express 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 11 

the mind by form, ideas by words, feelings by 
sounds, all that the mind feels, thinks, and 
wishes by signs and external action. To ob- 
tain skill in this art, therefore there are some 
qualifications which regard the mind, and others 
which depend on the body. 

The dispositions of the mind are natural or 
acquired. The former, which we are about to 
set forth in this chapter, are — 

1. A lively sensibility. 

2. A penetrating intelligence. 

3. A sound reason, or, as it is commonly 

called, good sense. 

4. A prompt imagination. 

5. A firm and decisive will. 

6. A natural necessity of expansion, or of 

communicating to others ideas and feel- 
ings. 

7. Finally, a certain instinct which urges a 

man to speak, as a bird to sing. 



§ 1. — A lively Sensibility. 

Art has its root in sensibility, and although 
the latter depends much on the body, and espe- 
cially on the nerves which are its physical 



12 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

medium, sensibility is nevertheless one of the 
principal powers of the mind, not to say a 
faculty, since the word faculty denotes a manner 
of acting, and sensibility is a manner of suffer- 
ing or of sustaining an action. 

Thus the mind w T hich lives only by its affini- 
ties, and which for action always requires an 
impression, acts only in proportion to the in- 
citements it receives, and the manner in which 
it receives them. It is, therefore, in this pe- 
culiar manner of receiving and appropriating 
impressions that the vivacity of sensibility 
necessary to artistic expression consists. Every 
man feels according to his sensitiveness ; but 
all do not feel in the same manner, and thus 
are neither able to express what they feel in 
the same manner, nor are disposed to the same 
kind of expression. Hence vocation to the 
different arts, or the natural inclination of the 
mind to express one particular thing which it feels 
the most strongly, and with the greatest pleasure. 
In this, also, lies the origin of taste in art, and 
in a particular art, the inclination either towards 
the exercise of such art or for the appreciation 
of its works. Some have more taste and faci- 
lity in the plastic arts ; others in the acoustic 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 13 

arts ; and even in the exercise of the same 
art there are different dispositions to a certain 
mode of expression which produce different 
styles. Thus in poetry there are poets who 
compose odes, epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, 
satire, idyls and eclogues, &c, &c, which are 
all poetic expressions of the human mind : and 
so far they resemble each other ; but they differ 
in the object which they reproduce, in the 
manner of representing it, and a poet in one 
style rarely succeeds in another. He can sing 
in one strain and not otherwise, as the song of 
the lark is not that of the nightingale. 

It is thus in the art of speaking ; one speaker 
has more power to set forth ideas, their con- 
nexion, and their gradations. He discerns 
perfectly the congruity, the difference, the con- 
trast of thoughts, and thus he will deliver 
them impromptu with facility, delicacy, and 
subtil ty. He has perception and ideality ; he 
conceives distinctly, and will therefore enunciate 
gracefully and clearly. Such an one is made 
to teach and to instruct. 

Another has a greater enjoyment of every- 
thing relating to the feelings and affections, to 
soft or strong emotions. He will therefore 



14 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

employ with greater pleasure and greater 
success all that can touch, move, and hurry- 
away his auditors ; he will cause the fibres of 
the heart to vibrate. Such an one will be an 
orator rather than a professor, and will be better 
able to persuade by emotion than to convince 
by reason. 

A third delights in images and pictures. 
He feels more vividly everything that he can 
grasp and reproduce in his imagination ; he 
therefore takes pleasure in these reproductions. 
Such an one will be a descriptive speaker, 
and will rise almost to poetry in his prose. 
He will speak to the imagination of his hearers 
rather than to their heart or mind : he will 
affect but little, and instruct still less ; but he 
will be able to amuse and interest, he will 
attract by originality, by the variety of his 
pictures, and by the vivacity and brilliancy of 
his colouring. 

In these different instances we see that sen- 
sibility is vividly excited either by ideas, by 
feelings, or by images ; and it is evident that 
he who would extemporise a discourse in one 
of these three methods, must feel vividly the 
subject upon which he has to speak, and employ 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 15 

language proportionate to the impression he 
has received and retained. 

But if sensibility must be strong, it must 
nevertheless be kept within certain limits; 
otherwise it renders expression impossible from 
the agitation of the mind, and the over-excite- 
ment of the nervous system. Thus, the precept 
of Horace, " Si vis me flere, dolendum est 
primum ipsi tibi," is true only for those who 
write in their closet, and does not apply to the 
orator. Before the public he must not weep, 
nor even be moved to such a point that his 
voice shall fail him, or be stifled by sobs ; he 
must weep with his voice, and not with his eyes ; 
he should have tears in his voice, but retain the 
mastery of them. 

At times, doubtless, a great effect may be 
produced by the very inability to speak, by the 
enthusiasm of feeling or the violence of grief; 
but then the discourse is finished, or, rather, it 
is no longer needed, and little matter, if the ob- 
ject be attained. But, for the art of oratory, 
sensibility must be restrained sufficiently at 
least for words to run their proper course. The 
feelings must not be declared at once, but 
escape little by little, so as gradually to 



16 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

animate the whole body of the discourse. It 
is thus that art idealises nature in rejecting all 
that from instinct or passion may be too rough 
or impetuous. The character of Christian art, 
that which renders it sublime, is, that in all its 
works there is a predominance of mind over 
matter, of the soul over the body, of man over 
nature. Christian feeling is never intemperate, 
never disorderly. It is always restrained within 
a certain point by the power of that will which, 
assisted by the higher strength supporting it, 
governs events, or rather, does not yield to 
them ; and when it appears overcome it bends 
beneath the storm of adversity, but is righted 
by resignation, and does not break. It is more 
than the thinking reed of Pascal ; it is a reed 
that wills. For this reason the types of Chris- 
tian art will never be surpassed. Never beneath 
the sun will there be seen images more sublime 
or more beautiful, than the figures of Jesus 
Christ and the Virgin. In this point of view 
the Christian orator, inasmuch as he is a Chris- 
tian, is very superior to the Pagan orator : he 
conceives, he feels very differently, both earthly 
and heavenly things, and his manner of feeling 
is more spiritual, pure, and worthy of man, for 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 17 

being less material, it gives to his expression 
something noble, elevated, and superhuman, 
approaching the language of heaven. 

The same may be said for the statement of 
ideas. It is doubtless necessary that they 
should be felt strongly with all that they em- 
brace, so that they may be analysed and deve- 
loped ; that, having been developed, they may 
be re-embodied, again concentrated, and reduced 
to unity. In this operation there is an infinity 
of gradations which must be delicately perceived 
and appreciated. But if this feeling become 
too strong, or take too completely possession 
of the mind, analysis or exposition becomes 
impossible ; the speaker is absorbed by the con- 
templation only of the general idea, is unable to 
enter upon its development, and from that 
moment he is incapable of speaking. This is 
the case with men of genius, but of an exag- 
gerated mental sensibility, who feel the necessity 
of writing to display their thoughts, because they 
require time to reflect and recover themselves 
from the fulness of the idea which overcomes 
them at first, or when they are required to speak 
of a sudden. Such was probably the case with 
Rousseau, w r ho was endowed w T ith remarkable 

c 



18 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

sensibility of mind. It may even happen that 
a too vehement and over exclusive perception 
of an idea may convert it into a fixed idea, and 
may lead to madness. Everything is so well 
balanced in our existence, everything must be 
done in such measure and proportion, that, no 
sooner do we exceed, however little, that mean 
point where lies the relative perfection of hu- 
manity, — than we fall into exaggeration, which 
destroys and renders powerless as much as de- 
ficiency itself. — In medio virtus. 

For description sensibility is required, but 
here also it must not run riot, or we wander to 
impressions of detail, and end by producing a 
species of poem or a monograph of each flower 
or object w T hich pleases us. 

This in painting is called tableaux de genre ; 
it may for an instant attract and amuse, but 
does not represent one idea worthy of art. It 
is in literature that kind of poetry or romance 
in which the Germans and English delight, and 
which consists in painting in the greatest detail 
the commonest things of life. Impressions are 
then borrowed from the domestic hearth, the 
life of a family, or of a country, as aesthetic 
sentiments, as effects of art, falling into a paltry 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 19 

realism, which lowers art in making it descend 
to the commonplace realities of life. Finally, 
it is the defect of those preachers who delight 
in continual descriptions, whether of a physical 
or of a moral nature, to render their sermons 
subject to their taste for imagery, and thus they 
become mere galleries of pictures, which amuse 
those who recognise in them the portraits of 
others, but fail to receive instruction to them- 
selves. He who would speak well, therefore, 
must feel what he has to say with sufficient 
strength to express it with warmth and vivacity ; 
but his feeling must not attain to that vehe- 
mence which prevents the mind from acting, 
and paralyses the expression from the very ful- 
ness of the feeling. This would be a sort of 
intellectual apoplexy, taking away the gift of 
speech, and rendering it powerless by excess 
of life. 



§ 2. — Keen Intelligence. 

In oratory the feelings must be resolved into 
ideas, thoughts, images, and thence into words, 
phrases, language, as a cloud or condensed 
vapour is transformed and distilled into rain, 

c 2 



20 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

" Eloquium Domini sicut imbres," says the 
Psalmist. The faculty which effects this trans- 
formation, by the operation of the mind account- 
ing inwardly and reflectively for all that is 
passing through it, is intelligence. It is for 
this reason that animals possessing sensibility, 
at times more subtle than that of man, are in- 
capable of speaking, although, like all other 
beings on earth, they may have a spontaneous 
language, by which a kindred nature manifests 
all that takes place among them. They have 
no intelligence, and thus they have neither con- 
sciousness nor reflection, though there exists in 
them a principle of life, gifted with. sensibility 
and instinct, which gives them the semblance 
of human intelligence, but it cannot be main- 
tained that they are reasonable; this would 
imply liberty and moral responsibility for their 
acts. For reason to exist, it is necessary that 
the mind, capable of feeling and seeing, should 
have the power of self-possession by means of 
reflection, and to consider and analyse by 
thought all that it has perceived and seen. 
Thus is formed in us an intellectual world 
peopled by our conceptions, that is to say, with 
ideas, with notions and images, which we can 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. '21 

compare, combine, and divide in a thousand 
manners, according to their approximation or 
their difference ; and which are finally expressed 
in speech, — the successive development of which 
is always the analysis of thought. 

Thus every extemporised discourse presup- 
poses a preliminary operation of thought. The 
thought must have been w T ell conceived, held, 
and grasped in a single idea which contains the 
v^hole substance. Then, for the exposition of 
this idea, it must have been divided into its 
principal parts, or into other subordinate ideas 
as members of it, and then again into others still 
more minutely, until the subject is exhausted. 
This multitude of thoughts must be w r ell ar- 
ranged, so that at the very moment each may 
arrive in the place marked out for it, and 
appear in its turn in the discourse to play its 
part and fulfil its function, the value of which 
consists in the antecedents which prepare and 
the consequences which develope it, as figures 
in an arithmetical operation have value in them- 
selves and also by their position. 

Much intelligence is therefore required for 
this preparatory labour, so useful in extem- 
porisation ; or, in other words, for the elabora- 



22 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

tion of a plan, without which it would be ha- 
zardous to venture on ground so dangerous and 
so slippery. The first condition of speaking is 
to know what is intended to be said, and the 
greater the intelligence employed in the pre- 
paration of the speech, and the more clearly it 
is conceived, the greater is the probability of 
presenting it forcibly to others. 

That which is well conceived is clearly enun- 
ciated. 

Nevertheless, this first labour is not sufficient ; 
it is easy enough in the silence of the closet, 
pen in hand, to elaborate a plan to be com- 
mitted to paper, and polished at leisure. But 
this plan must pass from the paper to the head, 
and be there established in divisions and subdi- 
visions, according to the order of thoughts both 
as a whole and in detail ; which cannot be well 
done, and in a sure and lasting manner, unless 
the mind keeps the ideas linked by their inti- 
mate, and not by their superficial relations; 
— by accidental or purely external associations, 
as are often formed by the imagination and the 
senses. In a word, there must reign between 
all the parts of the plan an order of filiation or 
generation; which is called the logical con- 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 23 

nection. Thus, the logical connection is the 
product of the intelligence which intuitively 
perceives the connection of ideas, even the 
most removed and the most profound; and of 
the reason which completes the view of the 
intelligence, by showing on the one hand con- 
nection by a chain of intermediary ideas, and 
on the other the order of this connection, by 
means pf reflection, and uniting them in a 
thought to be presented, or an end to be at- 
tained. 

Then comes a third step, which exacts even 
a greater subtlety and greater promptitude of 
mind. This plan which has been committed to 
paper, which is now carefully kept in the head, 
must be realised in words, and endowed with 
vitality. It is like dry bones which, by the 
breath of the orator, are of a sudden to reassume 
their muscles, nerves, and skin, and to rise, each 
in its place, to form a living body, beautiful to 
behold. The speaker must successively pass 
before his hearers all that he carries in his 
mind — all his ideas, giving to each, in its place, 
body, covering, colouring, and life. He should, 
however, while speaking, Janus-like, see double ; 
within, at his plan ; without, at the thread 



•24 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

of his discourse ; so as to keep within the 
line of his thought, without disturbing his 
arrangement, or diverging. He must, finally, 
be able, as on a day of battle, suddenly to 
modify what he has beforehand prepared ; fol- 
lowing whatever may present itself, and this 
without relinquishing his principal idea, which 
sustains all, and without which he would become 
the plaything of chance. He requires still 
many things, which will be pointed out later, 
when we shall speak of the discourse itself; 
and all of which, like those we have just men- 
tioned, presumes the exercise of an intense, 
rapid, and most penetrating intelligence. 



§ 3.— Bight Reason or Gfood Sense. 

A great deal of talent may exist without 
common sense, and this anomaly is often met 
with in clever persons, and those who wish 
to appear clever. By endeavouring to study 
objects under new phases, to say new things, or 
things apparently new, they end by never con- 
sidering them in a right light ; and the habit 
of regarding them in their varied aspects, takes 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 2o 

away the faculty of seeing them in their true 
meanings and natural bearings. 

Now, nothing is so fatal to extemporisation 
as this wretched tendency of the mind to lose 
itself in details, and to neglect the main point. 
Without at this moment speaking of the con- 
struction of the plan, wherein simplicity and 
clearness are needed, good sense is singularly 
conducive, and ought, above all things, to pre- 
vail ; it is evident that this quality, so useful 
in business, is more than ever so in the instanta- 
neous formation of a discourse, and in the dan- 
gerous task of extemporising, whether as regards 
matter or manner. 

Good sense is the instinctive action of right 
reason, discriminating with a rapidity of feel- 
ing, and by an intuitive perception, what is or 
is not suitable to any circumstance. Therefore, it 
is a sudden appreciation of a thousand bearings 
presented to the mind, as when, amidst the 
fervour of delivery and from the general effect 
of the address, — things not to be estimated by 
the plan alone, but declaring themselves on the 
instant, — an idea on which stress should be 
laid, — what part of it should be neglected, — 
what should be compressed, — what should be 



26 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

enlarged upon, — must all be promptly seized. 
Then a new thought which suggests itself and 
must be introduced, — an explanation which 
might run to too great a length and which 
must be abridged, — an emotion or effect to be 
excited as you pass on without losing sight of 
the main effect, — a digression into which you 
may enter without breaking the guiding thread 
of this labyrinth and while at need recovering 
it, — all have to be judged of, decided upon, 
and executed at the very moment itself, and 
during the unsuspended progress of the dis- 
course. 

The same applies to the form or style of the 
speech. How many mental and literary pro- 
prieties to be observed ! A doubtful phrase 
coming into the mouth and to be discarded, — 
an ambitious, pretentious expression to be 
avoided, — a trite or commonplace term which 
occurs to be excluded, — a sentence which is 
opened with a certain boldness and the close 
of which is not yet clear, — even while you 
are finishing the development of one period, 
your view thrown forward to the next thought, 
and to the link which is to connect it with that 
which you are ending ! Truly there is enough 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 27 

to produce giddiness when one reflects on the 
matter ; nevertheless, the discernment of such 
a multiplicity of points must be instantaneous, 
and indeed it is performed with a kind of cer- 
tainty, and as it were of its own accord, if the 
subject have been fitly prepared, if you be 
thoroughly in possession of it, and if you be 
well inclined at the moment. 

But in order to walk with this direct and 
firm step through a discourse, which arises, as 
it were, before the orator in proportion as he 
advances, like an enchanted forest, all teeming 
with sorceries and apparitions, in which so many 
different paths cross each other, — in order to 
accept none of these brilliant phantoms save 
those which can be serviceable to the subject, 
dispelling like vain shadows all the rest, — in 
order to choose exactly the road which leads 
most directly to your destination, and to keep 
constantly in that which you have marked out 
for yourself beforehand, shunning all other 
byways, however alluring they may appear, — 
you most assuredly require that clear, decisive, 
and certain sight which good sense gives, and 
that kind of instinct of taste for truth which it 
alone produces. 



28 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

§ 4.— -Readiness of Imagination. 

Imagination is like a double-faced mirror, in 
part turned towards the outer world, and reflect- 
ing its objects, in part towards the light of ideas, 
tinging it with its hues, forming it into repre- 
sentations, and disposing it into pictures, while 
decomposing it as the prism does the solar ray. 
It is thus that speech renders metaphysical 
objects more approachable and comprehensible ; 
it gives them a body, or a raiment, which makes 
them visible and almost palpable. 

Imagination is one of the most necessary of 
the orator's faculties, and especially to him who ' 
extemporises ; first, in order that he may be able 
to fix his plan well in his mind— -for it is 
chiefly by means of the imagination that it is 
there fixed, or painted ; in the second place, 
in order that it may be preserved there in full 
life, well connected, and well arranged, until 
the moment for realising it or putting it forth 
by means of the discourse. Imagination is also 
very useful to him in order to represent sud- 
denly to himself what he wishes to express to 
others when a new thought arises, and when 
an image, germinating, as it were, in the heat 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 29 

of oratorical action, like a flower opening 
forthwith under the sun's rays, is presented 
unexpectedly to the mind. Then the instant 
he has a glimpse of it, after having rapidly de- 
cided whether it suits the subject and befits its 
place, he, while yet speaking, seizes it eagerly, 
passes it warm beneath the active machinery 
of the imagination, extends, refines, developes, 
makes it ductile and glittering, and marks 
it at once with some of the types or moulds 
which imagination possesses. Or else, if we 
maybe allowed another comparison, the thought 
passes through the presses of the imagination, 
like those sheets of paper which revolve be- 
tween the cylinders of mechanical presses, and 
issue forth all covered with characters and 
images. 

Now this most complicated and subtle labour 
must be performed with the quickness of light- 
ning, amidst the onward current of the discourse, 
which cannot be arrested or slackened without 
becoming languid. The imagination ought 
then to be endowed with great quickness in 
the formation and variation of its pictures ; but 
it requires also great clearness, in order to pro- 
duce at the first effort, a well-marked image, 



30 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

the lines and outlines defined with exactitude, 
and the tints bright, — so that language has 
only to reproduce it unhesitatingly, and uncon- 
fusedly, as an object is faithfully represented 
in a spotless glass. For you must not grope 
for your words while speaking, under penalty 
of braying like a donkey, which is the death of 
a discourse. The expression of the thought 
must be effected at the first stroke, and de- 
cidedly — a condition which hinders many men, 
and even men of talent, from speaking in public. 
Their imagination is not sufficiently supple, 
ready, or clear; it works too slowly, and is 
left behind by the lightning of the thought, 
which at first dazzles it, a result due either to 
a natural deficiency, or to want of practice ; or 
else, — and this is the most general case with 
men of talent, — it arises from allowing the 
mind to be too much excited and agitated in 
the presence of the public and in the hurry of 
the moment ; whence a certain incapacity for 
speaking, not unlike inability to walk produced 
by giddiness. 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 31 

§ 5. — Firmness and Decision of Will. 

Unquestionably courage is necessary to ven- 
ture upon speaking in public. To rise before 
an assembly, often numerous and imposing, 
without books or notes, carrying everything 
in the head, and to undertake a discourse in 
the midst of general silence, with all eyes 
fixed on you, under the obligation of keeping 
that audience attentive and^interestedfor three- 
quarters of an hour, an hour, and sometimes 
longer, is assuredly an arduous task and a 
weighty burden. All who accept this burden, 
or have it imposed upon them, know how 
heavy it is, and what physical and mental 
suffering is experienced until it is discharged. 
Timidity or hesitation will make a person inca- 
pable of the duty ; and such will always recoil 
from the dangers of the situation. 

When, indeed, it is remembered how little 
is required to disconcert and even paralyse the 
orator, — his own condition, bodily and moral, 
which is not always favourable at a given mo- 
ment — that of the hearers so unstable and 
prone to vary never known, — the distractions 
which may assail and divert him from his sub- 



32 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

ject, — the failure perhaps of memory, so that 
a part of the plan, and occasionally its main 
division, may be lost on the instant, — the inert- 
ness of the imagination, which may play him 
false, and bring feebly and confusedly to the 
mind what it represents, — the escape of an 
unlucky expression, — the not finding the pro- 
per term, — a sentence badly begun, out of 
which he no longer knows his way, — and finally, 
all the influences to which he is subjected, and 
which converge upon him from a thousand eyes, 
— when all these things are borne in mind, it 
is truly enough to make a person lose head or 
heart, and the only wonder is that men can be 
found who will face such dangers, and fling 
themselves into the midst of them. Nor, 
indeed, ought they to be courted save when 
duty urges, when your mission enjoins it, or in 
order to fulfil some obligation of conscience 
or of position. Any other motive — such as 
ambition, vainglory, or interest — exposes you 
to cruel miscalculations and w T ell-merited down- 
falls. 

The strength of will needed to hold so 
responsible a position is of course aided and 
sustained by a suitable preparation.; and, of 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 33 

all preparations, the best is, to have a clear 
conception of the subject upon which you would 
speak. But, besides the possession of the 
idea, and the chain of thoughts suggested by 
it, there is still the hazard of uttering inappro- 
priate as well as appropriate w T orcls. Who is 
assured beforehand, that, on such a day, ex- 
pressions will not prove rebellious to him, that 
the right phrase will come in the place ap- 
pointed, and that language (like a sword) will 
not turn its edge ? It is in the details of diction 
at the moment, or the instantaneous composition 
of the discourse, that great decision is required 
to select words as they fly past, to control them 
immediately, and, amidst many unsuitable, to 
allow none but what are suitable to drop from 
the lips. Moreover, a certain boldness is re- 
quired, — and who knows whether it will 
always be a successful boldness ? — to enter 
upon the development of any sudden idea, 
without knowing whither it will lead you, — to 
obey some oratorical inspiration which may 
carry you far away from the subject, and, finally, 
to jump, as it w r ere, into a sentence, the issue of 
which you cannot foresee, particularly in French, 
which has only one possible class of termi- 



34 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

nations to its periods, is surely a dangerous ex- 
periment. Nevertheless, when once you have 
begun, you must rigidly beware of retreating by 
any break in the thought or in the sentence. 
You must go on daringly to the end, even 
though you take refuge in some unauthorised 
turn of expression or some incorrectness of 
language. Timid minds are frightened from 
adopting these extreme resources ; for which 
reason we affirm that to expose oneself to this 
hazard, — and whoever extemporises does so, — 
decision and even a little rashness of will are 
necessary, both beforehand and during the pro- 
cess, in order that we may close our subject 
without a fall. 



§ 6. — Expansiveness of Character. 

There are two sorts of expansiveness, that of 
the mind and that of the heart. 

The mind seeks after truth, which is its 
natural object. 

Now truth is like light, or rather, it is the 
light of the intelligence ; and this is why it is 
diffusive by its very nature, and spontaneously 
enters wherever an avenue is opened to it. 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 35 

When, therefore, we perceive, or think that we 
perceive a truth, the mind rejoices in, and 
feeds upon it, because it is its natural ali- 
ment ; in assimilating and appropriating it, the 
mind partakes of its expansive force, and expe- 
riences the desire of announcing to others what 
it knows itself, and of making them see what it 
sees. It is its happiness to become a torch 
to this light, and to help in diffusing it. It 
sometimes even glories in the joy it feels ; the 
pride also of enlightening our fellows, and so 
of ruling them to a certain extent, is part of the 
feeling. A keen and intelligent mind, which 
seeks truth, seizes it quickly and conceives it 
clearly, is more eager than another to commu- 
nicate what it knows ; and if, along with this, 
such a mind loves glory, — and who loves it not, 
at least in youth ? — it will be impelled the more 
towards public speaking, and be the more 
capable of exercising the power of eloquence. 

But there is, besides, a certain disposition of 
character and heart which contributes much 
to the same result, as is seen in women and 
children, who speak willingly and with great 
ease, on account of their more impressionable 
sensibility, the greater delicacy of their organs, 

d 2 



36 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

and their extreme mobility. Something of this 
is required in the extemporiser. A self-centred 
person, who reflects a great deal and meditates 
long before he can perceive a truth or seize an 
analogy, and who either cannot or will not 
manifest what he feels or thinks, until he has 
exactly shaped the expression of it, is not fitted 
for extemporaneous speaking. A melancholy, 
morose, misanthropic person, who shuns society, 
dreads the intercourse of men, and delights in 
solitary musing, will have a difficulty in speaking 
in public ; he has not the taste for it, and his 
nature is against it. What is needed for this 
art, with a quick mind, is an open, confiding, 
and cheerful character, which loves men and 
takes pleasure in joining itself to others. Mis- 
trust shuts the heart, the mind, and the mouth. 
This expansiveness of character, which is 
favourable to extemporaneous speaking, has, 
however, its disadvantages. It sometimes gives 
to the mind an unsettled levity, and too much 
recklessness, something venturesome or super- 
ficial to the style. But these disadvantages 
may be lessened or neutralised by a serious 
preparation, by a well-considered and well- 
defined plan, which will sustain and direct the 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 37 

exuberance of language, and remove by pre- 
vious reflection the chances of digressiveness 
and inconsequence. 



§ 7. — Instinctive or Natural Grift of Speaking. 

Art may develope, and perfect the talent of 
a speaker, but cannot produce it. The exer- 
cises of grammar and of rhetoric will teach 
a person how to speak correctly and elegantly ; 
but nothing can teach him to be eloquent, or give 
that eloquence which comes from the heart, and 
goes to the heart. All the precepts and arti- 
fices on earth can but form the appearances or 
semblance of it. Now this true and natural 
eloquence which moves, persuades, and tran- 
sports, consists of a soul and a body, like man, 
whose image, glory, and word it is. 

The soul of eloquence is the centre of the 
human soul itself, which, enlightened by the 
impression, flashes or bursts forth to manifest, 
by some sign or other, what it feels or sees. 
This it is which gives movement and life to a 
discourse ; it is like a kindled torch, or a deli- 
cately vibrating nerve. 

The body of eloquence is the language 



38 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

which it requires in order to speak, and which 
must harmoniously clothe what it thinks or 
feels, as a fine shape harmonises with the spirit 
which it contains. The material part of lan- 
guage is learnt instinctively, and practice makes 
us feel, and seize its delicacies and shades. 
The understanding then, which sees rightly 
and conceives clearly, and the heart which feels 
keenly, find naturally, and without effort, the 
words, and the arrangements of words, most 
analogous to what is to be expressed. Hence 
the innate talent of eloquence, which results 
alike from certain intellectual and moral apti- 
tudes, and from the physical constitution, espe- 
cially from that of the senses and of the organs 
of the voice. 

There are men organised to speak well, as 
there are birds organised to sing well, bees to 
make honey, and beavers to build. 

Doubtless, all men are capable of speaking, 
since they are rational beings, and the exercise 
of reason is impossible, without speech ; beyond 
all doubt, moreover, any man may become 
momentarily eloquent, being suddenly illumi- 
nated by an idea, by some passing inspiration, 
or the vehement impulse of a feeling ; bursts 



NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 39 

and cries of passion are often a high kind of 
eloquence. But it is the effect of an instant, 
which passes away with the unusual circum- 
stances, which have produced it; during the 
rest of their lives these same persons may speak 
very ill, and be incapable of pronouncing a 
sentence in public. They have not the gift of 
words, and those alone who are endowed with 
it by nature, can derive advantage from the ad- 
vice we offer, in order to turn this precious talent 
to account in the service of truth and justice. 

It is with eloquence as with all art ; to suc- 
ceed in it, you must be made for it, or called to 
it, by a mysterious tendency or inexplicable 
attraction, which influences the whole being, 
which ultimately turns to its object, as the mag- 
netic needle to the north. At the root of all 
arts, so various in their expression, there is 
something in common to them all — the life of 
the soul, the life of the mind, which feels the 
want of diffusing, manifesting, and multiplying 
itself; each individual also has something 
peculiar and original, by which he is impelled, 
on account of his special organisation, or con- 
stitution of mind and body, to reproduce his 
mental life in such or such a way, by such or 



40 NATURAL QUALITIES NECESSARY. 

such means, or in such or such a material form. 
Hence the boundless diversity of the arts and 
of their productions. Speech is certainly the 
noblest and most powerful of the arts; first, 
because by its nature, it is nearest to the intel- 
ligence whose ideas it alone perfectly expresses ; 
secondly, in consequence of the higher purity, 
the more exquisite delicacy of its means of 
expression, being the least gross of any, hold- 
ing on to earth by nothing save a light breath ; 
lastly, on account of its powerful and direct 
action over the mind, making it conceive things, 
comprehend thought, and grasp the truth. 

In order, then, to exercise with success the 
art of speaking, — or to speak eloquently, — it 
is necessary to have a natural talent, which is 
a gift of Heaven, and which all science with 
its precepts, and all earth's teaching with its 
exercises, are unable to supply. 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 41 



CHAPTER III. 

MENTAL APTITUDES FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING, 
CAPABLE OF BEING ACQUIRED, OR FORMED 
BY STUDY. 

The dispositions which can be acquired, or 
formed by study, come next after the natural 
aptitudes of the mind, and these will be the 
subject of this chapter. 

We give the name of acquired dispositions to 
certain aptitudes of mind, the germ of which is 
no doubt supplied by nature, but which may be 
called forth and developed in a remarkable 
manner by instruction, practice, and habit, 
whereas purely natural talent, although it also 
may be perfected by art, resembles, neverthe- 
less, to a certain extent, that instinct which 
attains its object at the first effort. It may 
even happen that a remarkable, acquired ability, 
such, for instance, as the art of speaking rheto- 
rically, has but slight natural root, that is, but 
little real talent, producing nothing except by 



42 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

dint of art, practice, and toil ; if the natural 
root be absent, however beautiful the products 
may at first appear, people soon feel their arti- 
ficial character and want of life. 

The acquired mental aptitudes are, the art or 
method of thinking, and the art or method of speak- 
ing. Bnt before considering them, we will say 
a few words about the orator's fund or store of 
knowledge, which must not be confounded 
with acquired qualities. 

§ 1. — Acquisitions or Fund needful to the Orator. 

The orator's capital is that sum of science or 
knowledge which is necessary to him in order 
to speak pertinently upon any subject what- 
ever ; and science or knowledge are not extem- 
porised. Although knowledge does not give 
the talent for speaking, still he who knows w T ell 
what he has to say, has many chances of saying 
it w ? ell, especially if he have a clear and distinct 
conception of it. 

" What you conceive aright, you express clearly; 
And the words to say it in, come easily." 

It is an excellent preparation, then, for the 
art of speaking to study perseveringly, — not 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 43 

merely the matter about which you have to 
discourse — a thing always done before speaking 
in public, unless a person be presumptuous and 
demented, — but generally all those subjects 
which form part of a liberal education, and 
which constitute the usual instruction of men 
intended for intellectual and moral professions. 
These were what were formerly termed clas- 
sical studies, and they included grammar, rhe 
toric, logic, a certain portion of literature, his- 
tory, mathematical and physical science, and 
religious knowledge. These " classical studies" 
were perfected and completed, by the superior 
courses of the universities. 

To have passed through a good educational 
career, or to have been distinguished at school, 
as it is commonly expressed, is an immense 
advantage ; for it is in childhood and youth 
that the greatest number of things are learnt, 
and the knowledge acquired at that age, is 
most durable. It is more than this, it is inef- 
faceable, and constitutes an indestructible 
fund, a sort of mental ground-work upon 
which is raised all other instruction and 
education ; and this fund, according to the 
manner in which it is placed in the mind, 



44 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

determines the solidity and dimensions of each 
person's intellectual and moral existence. 

It is impossible to estimate accurately the 
influence of the first instruction, which a man 
receives : that influence depends upon the virtue 
of the words w T hich instruct, and on the way 
they are received. It is a sort of fertilisation, 
the fruits of which are sometimes slow in 
ripening, and come forth late. As the life- 
giving action of instruction cannot be exercised 
but through the medium of words, the signs of 
language, so the form often overlies the spirit, 
and many retain scarcely more than the letter 
or the words, which they reproduce from 
memory with great facility. The larger part of 
infantine successes and collegiate glories are 
limited to this. Others, on the contrary, deeply 
smitten with the spirit of what is said, early 
conceive ideas of a fertile kind, destined to 
become the parent ideas of their future thoughts. 
The more impressed and absorbed the mind is 
inwardly, the less vividly and the less bril- 
liantly will it manifest itself outwardly. It 
carries within it ideas too great for what con- 
tains them, and of which it cannot yet render 
to itself an account ; and it is only afterwards, 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 45 

when it has capacity and time for reflection, 
that it knows how to recognise, turn to advan- 
tage, and bring forth to the light, the treasures 
buried within. 

Hence two kinds of intellectual wealth 
dependent upon instruction, and derived 
from the manner in which it has been given 
and received. 

1. A collection of words, expressions, images, 
facts, superficial thoughts, common places, — 
things commonly received and already dis- 
cussed ; whatever, in a word, strikes the senses, 
excites the imagination, and easily impresses 
itself upon the memory. It is not to be denied 
that this intellectual store, however light, 
accumulated during many years, and arranged 
with a certain degree of order, may be of some 
service towards speaking with facility on some 
occasions, but like the rhetorician ; the speaker 
composes on the instant a sort of discourse or 
harangue more or less elegant, wherein there 
may be certain happy expressions but few 
ideas, and which may yet afford a transient 
pleasure to the listener, but without moving or 
instructing him. In many circumstances, dis- 
courses of this class suffice. It is a part played, 



46 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

a portion of the programme performed, and it 
is assuredly an advantage not to be despised 
to acquit oneself of it with honour, and without 
discredit. 

2. But the real fund is in ideas, not in 
phrases, in the succession or connection of 
the thoughts, and not in a series of facts or 
images. He who has laid in a store of this 
kind is not so ready at a speech, because 
there is within him a veritable thought, with 
which his spirit strives in order to master, 
possess, and manifest it, so soon as he shall 
have thoroughly entered into it; such a man 
speaks not merely from memory or imagination, 
but with a labour of the understanding, and 
thus he produces something with life in it, 
and capable of inspiring life — and this is just 
what distinguishes the orator from the rheto- 
rician. 

The latter may charm by his language, but 
he imparts no life ; and thus nothing is produced 
in the mind of the hearer. It is pleasant 
music which delights the ear for a moment, 
and leaves nothing behind it. Vox et prceterea 
nihil. 

The former raises up a new set of objects in 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 47 

the hearer's mind, producing therein feelings, 
affections, emotions, ideas ; he renews it, trans- 
forms it, and turns it into a likeness of him- 
self; and as the Almighty created all things by 
His word, so the true orator animates those 
who understand him, and makes them live with 
his own intellectual life. But in this, as in all 
things, it is only by a Divine virtue that life 
is transmitted. The sacred fire which warms 
the bosom of the orator is inspiration from 
on high: pectus est quod clisertum facit. Without 
this life-giving fire, the finest phrases that 
can be put together are but sounding brass and 
tinkling cymbals. 

The fund to be amassed, therefore, by those 
who intend to speak in public, is a treasury of 
ideas, thoughts, and principles of knowledge, 
strongly conceived, firmly linked together, 
carefully wrought out, in such a way that, 
throughout all this diversity of study, the mind, 
so far as may be, shall admit nothing save what 
it thoroughly comprehends, or at least has 
made its own to a certain extent, by medita- 
tion. Thus, knowledge becomes strangely 
subservient to the understanding; and memory 
lends its stores to enlarge the mind. It is 



48 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

the essence of things reduced to their simplest 
expression, and comprising all their concen- 
trated virtue. It is the drop of oil extracted 
from thousands of roses, and fraught with their 
accumulated odours; the healing power of a 
hundred-weight of bark in a few grains of 
quinine. In a word, it is the idea in its intel- 
lectuality, and metaphysical purity, compared 
to the multiplicity of facts and images from 
which it has been extracted, and of which it is 
the law. This point is not well enough under- 
stood in our day, when material things are 
made paramount,- ^and the spirit is postponed 
to the letter, — to such a degree indeed, that 
even in instruction, and in spiritual or men- 
tal things, quantity is considered more than 
quality. 

Under the specious pretext of preparing 
men betimes for their future profession in 
society, and of making them what are called 
special men, their attention is directed from the 
tenderest age to phenomena, which occupy the 
senses and the imagination without exciting 
thought ; and above all, without recalling the 
mind home to itself, in order to teach it self- 
knowledge, self-direction, and self-possession, 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 49 

— worth, assuredly, the knowledge or possession 
of everything else. Instruction is materialised 
to the utmost ; and in the same degree educa- 
tion is sensualised. It is driven headlong into 
that path which is the acknowledged reproach 
of contemporary art, — not nature and truth, 
but naturalism and realism. People care no 
longer for any but positive, or, as it is styled, 
professional instruction, — that is, such as may 
directly serve to earn the bread of this world. 
Men are trained for the one end of turning 
this earth to account, and securing in it a com- 
fortable position. It is forgotten that the true 
man, like thought, is an idea, more than the 
body or the letter, and that the body and the 
letter have no value except from the idea 
which animates him, and which he should 
express. The ideal is dreaded now-a-days, or 
rather it is not understood, it is no longer 
appreciated, because our views are absorbed 
by the real, and the pleasures of the body are 
more sought after, than those of the mind. 

For this reason the natural and physical 
sciences, which make matter their study, with 
mathematics as their handmaidens, because 
they measure the finite, are so much honoured 

E 



50 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

in our day. In these pursuits everything is 
positive, — matter, form, letter, number, weight, 
and measure ; and as the end of these studies 
is the amelioration, or at least the embellish- 
ment of earthly life, the multitude rushes 
readily in this direction, and the mind becomes 
the servant, or rather the slave of the body. 

At the present moment, every science which 
is not directly or indirectly subservient to 
some material want or enjoyment, — that is to 
say, to something positive, — falls into contempt 
and opprobrium, and is abandoned. Philo- 
sophy furnishes a melancholy example of this 
fact. True, it has well deserved this fate by 
its excess and extravagance in recent times ; 
and the same will invariably befall it, whenever 
it affects independence, and refuses fealty to 
Divine authority. It is the same w r ith litera- 
ture, the fine arts, and whatever promotes the 
civilisation of men and the triumph of the 
Divine principle, made after the image of God, 
over the brute formed after the image of the 
world. All these noble objects are abandoned 
as useless, or of little importance to the wants 
and happiness of actual society. Religion has 
alone survived, thanks to her unchangeable 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 51 

teaching and her Divine origin, which place 
her above human institutions and the vicissi- 
tudes of earth. But for the Rock of the Divine 
Word, but for the Divine foundation-stone, on 
which she is built, she also, under pretence of 
rendering her more useful or more positive, 
more suited to the wants and lights of the age, 
would have been lowered and materialised, 
and the last link which binds humanity to 
heaven, would have been broken, the spiritual 
man would have been wholly interred, in the 
slough of this world, and buried in sensuality. 
Let but one glance be given at what has been 
the fate of Religion and its Divine authority, 
in some instances, and a notion will be gained 
of the degradation from which Religion still 
preserves the human race. She is the last 
refuge of freedom and dignity of mind against 
material force. Everywhere else, religious in- 
struction, without faith and without fixed rule, 
is at the mercy of human science, and therefore 
of the world's power, which makes that science 
the instrument of its own predominance. 

I crave forgiveness for this digression which 
has escaped from a heart deeply saddened at 
the lowering of our system of studies and 

E 2 



52 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

the decline of our education, which will lead 
to a new species of barbarism in this age of 
ours. 

I return to my subject, that is, to the fund 
which he who wishes to speak in public should 
form within himself; and I say to the young 
w 7 ho may read me, — if, indeed, they will read 
me — I say, at least to those who may feel 
themselves impelled to the noble exercise of 
eloquence : " My young friends, before speak- 
ing, endeavour to know what you have to say, 
and for this, study— study well. Obtain by 
perseverance an acquaintance first with all that 
relates to classical learning; and then let each 
labour ardently in the department to which his 
vocation urges him. Whatever you study, do so 
solidly and conscientiously. Bend your w 7 hole 
mind to the object you seek to know, and let 
it not go till you have entered into, mastered, 
and grasped it, so as to comprehend it, to con- 
ceive it within yourselves, to possess the full 
idea of it, and to be able to give an account 
of it to yourselves and others. There is but 
one time for acquirement, it is the time of 
youth. Bees gather in the flower-season only 
they afterwards live upon their wax and honey. 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 53 

In youth all the faculties are wondrously 
adapted to receive and retain, and the mind 
eagerly welcomes what comes from without. 
It is now that supplies should be laid in, the 
harvest gathered, and stored in the garner. 
Later comes the threshing of the sheaves, and 
the severing of the grain from the straw, — 
the grinding, the formation of pure flour, the 
kneading of it, and the making of bread. But 
there would be neither bread, nor flour, nor 
grain, if there had been no reaping, — and what 
can be reaped if the seed has not been cast, nor 
the ground opened and prepared ? Sow, then, 
the field of your mind as much as possible, till 
it, and moisten it with your sweat, that the good 
seed may bear fruit, and use the sickle cou- 
rageously in the heat of the day, in order to fill 
the storehouse of your understanding. Then 
when you shall have to feed a famishing people 
with the bread of eloquence, you will have in 
hand rich ears to beat, and generous grain 
yielding pure substance ; from this substance, 
kneaded in your mind with a little leaven 
from on high, imparting to it a Divine fer- 
mentation, you may form intellectual bread 
full of flavour and solidity, which will give 



54 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

your audience the nourishment of mind and 
soul, even as bread gives aliment to the body." 



§ 2. — To know how to speak, you must first "know 
how to think. 

We now come to the acquired qualities pro- 
perly so called, that is, to the art of thinking, 
and the method of expressing what is thought, 
which may be learnt by study and formed by 
well-directed practice. 

Although we think by nature, yet there is 
an art of thinking, which teaches us to do with 
greater ease and certainty what our nature, as 
rational beings, leads us to do spontaneously. 
In all that man voluntarily does, liberty has its 
own share ; and liberty, which nowhere exists 
without intelligence, is ever the source of pro- 
gress and perfection. Man learns how to think 
as he learns how to speak, read, write, and 
sing, to move his body gracefully, and to use all 
the powers of mind and body. 

Logic teaches the art of thinking. The 
orator therefore must be a good logician ; not 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 55 

theoretically, but practically. It is not his 
business to know how to declaim about the 
origin and formation of ideas, nor about the 
four operations of thought. It is not the 
method of teaching, but the use of logic which 
he requires, — and a prompt and dexterous 
familiarity with it he will not acquire, except 
by long and repeated exercises, under the 
guidance of an experienced thinker, an artist 
of thought, who will teach him how to do with 
ease, what he knows how to do already of him- 
self imperfectly. 

We, in this point of view and to a certain 
degree, regret the old syllogistic method of the 
schools; for we are convinced that, properly 
applied and seriously directed, it gives quick- 
ness, subtlety, clearness, and something sure 
and firm to the mind, rarely found in the 
thinkers of the present day. The fault for- 
merly, perhaps, was in the excess of the dia- 
lectical turn, by which the style became spoilt 
by dryness, heaviness, and an appearance of 
pedantry. Still, men knew how to state a 
question, and how to treat it : they knew at 
which end to begin it, in order to develope and 
solve it; and the line of the argument, dis- 



56 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

tinctly marked out, led straight to the object 
and to its conclusion. The fault now-a-days 
is in an absence or deficiency of method. 
People remain a long time before their subject, 
without knowing how to begin it, even though 
they rightly understand its very terms. This 
superinduces interminable preparations, desul- 
tory introductions, a confused exposition, a 
disorderly development, and finally no conclu- 
sion, or at least nothing decisive. There are 
many men in our day who know how to think, 
and develope a subject in such a way as to 
instruct and interest those who listen to them. 
A horror is everywhere felt for rules or for 
what imposes constraint, and, as nearly all the 
barriers have been removed which supported 
and protected human activity, by obliging it 
to exert itself within fixed lines, liberty has 
become disorder, men swerve from the track, 
in order to walk at their ease ; and, far from 
gaining by it, they lose great part of their time 
and strength in seeking a path which would 
have been shown them from the outset had 
they chosen to accept of discipline, and to 
allow themselves to be guided. In order to 
think in their own fashion, or to be original, 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 57 

they think at random, just as ideas happen to 
come ; and the upshot, for the most part, is 
vagueness, oddity and confusion. This is the 
era of the vague and the almost. Everybody 
wants to speak of everything, as everybody 
wants to interfere in everything ; and the result 
is that amidst this flood of thoughts, this over- 
flow of divergent or irreconcilable words and 
actions, the minds of men, tossed to and fro, 
float uncertain, without a notion where they are 
going just as the wind blows or the current 
drive 5. 

I would have, then, persons who are intended 
for public speaking, follow a course of logic, 
rather practical than theoretic, in which the 
mind should be vigorously trained to the divi- 
sion and combination of ideas upon interesting 
and instructive topics. These exercises should 
be written or oral. Sometimes it should be a 
dissertation on a point of literature, morals, 
or history; and a habit should be acquired 
of composing with order and method, by point- 
ing out, in proportion as the student proceeded, 
the several parts of the discourse, the steps of 
the development, and means of proof — in a 
word, whatever serves to treat a subject suitably. 



58 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

Sometimes it should be a discussion between 
several debaters, with the whole apparatus and 
strict rules of a dialectic argument, under the 
master's direction ; the disputants should not 
be allowed to proceed or conclude without re- 
ducing their thoughts to the forms of syllogistic 
reasoning, — a process which entails some 
lengthiness, and even heaviness upon the dis- 
course, but it gives greater clearness, order, and 
certainty. At other times, the debate might be 
extemporaneous, and then, in the unforeseen 
character of the discussion and in all the 
sparks of intelligence which it strikes forth, 
will be seen the minds which are distinguished, 
the minds that know how to take possession 
of an idea at once, enter into it, divide, and 
expound it. There should, for every position 
or thesis, be the counter-position or antithesis, 
and some one to maintain it; for in every 
subject there are reasons for and against. 
Thus would the student learn to look at things 
in various lights, and not to allow himself to 
be absorbed by one point of view, or by a pre- 
conceived opinion. But these gymnastics of 
thinking ought to be led by an intelligent mas- 
ter, who suffers not himself to be swayed by 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 59 

forms or enslaved by routine. Real thinking 
must be effected under all these forms of dis- 
putation and argument, but the letter must not 
kill the spirit, as frequently was the case in the 
schools of antiquity. For then it would no 
longer be anything but an affair of memory, 
and the life of intelligence would die away. I 
am convinced, — -and I have made the experi- 
ment for a length of years in the Faculty of 
Strasbourg, where I had established these ex- 
ercises, which proved exceedingly useful, — I 
am convinced that young men who thus occu- 
pied themselves during a year or two in turn- 
ing over and handling a variety of questions, 
in stirring up a multiplicity of ideas, and who 
should, with a view to this, write and speak a 
great deal, always with order, with method, 
and under good guidance, would become able 
thinkers ; and, if endowed with high intelli- 
gence, would become men mighty in word or 
in deed, or in both together, according to their 
capacity, character, and nature. 



60 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

§ 3. — That Cfood Speaking may be learnt, and 
how. 

However, it is not enough to think metho- 
dically, in order to speak well, although this be 
a great step towards it ; to express or say what 
is thought is also necessary; in other words, 
form must be added to the substance. 

We must learn then how to speak as well as 
how to think well. 

Here again, practice surpasses theory, and 
daily exercise is worth more than precepts. 
Rhetoric teaches the art of language; that 
is, of speaking or writing elegantly, while 
grammar shows how to do so with correctness. 
It is clear that before anything else, the rules 
of language must be known and observed ; 
but correctness gives neither elegance nor 
grace, which are the most requisite qualities of 
the orator. How are they then to be acquired ? 

In the first place there is what cannot be 
acquired — a natural fund, which nature alone 
can give. Women are remarkable for it. The 
gracefulness with which nature has endowed 
them, diffuses itself generally into their lan- 
guage ; and some speak, and even write, admi- 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 61 

rably, without any study ; under the sole in- 
spiration of feeling or passion. Credit, indeed, 
must be given to the medium in which they 
are placed, and the society in which they live, 
constituting a moral atmosphere in which their 
very impressionable and open minds — unless 
wilfully closed— absorb all influences with 
avidity, and receive a kind of spontaneous culture 
and education. As plants, which bear in their 
germs the hidden treasures of the most brilliant 
and odoriferous flowers, inhale from the ground 
where they are fixed, and the air which encom- 
passes them, the coarsest juices and the subtlest 
fluids, which they marvellously transform by 
assimilation ; so these delicate souls absorb into 
themselves all thev come into contact with, all 
that impresses or nourishes them ; which they 
manifest by a soft radiation, by a graceful 
efflorescence in their movements, actions, words, 
and whatever emanates from their persons. 

Women naturally speak better than men. 
They express themselves more easily, more 
vividly ; with more arch simplicity, because 
they feel more rapidly and more delicately. 
Hence the loquacity with which they are re- 
proached, and which is an effect of their 



62 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

constitution and temperament. Hence there 
are so many women who write in an admi- 
rable and remarkable manner, although they 
have studied neither rhetoric nor logic, and 
have not even a perfect knowledge of grammar. 
They write as they speak ; they speak pretty 
much as the birds sing, — and their language 
has the same charm. Add to this the sweetness 
of their organ, the flexibility of their voice, the 
variety of their intonations, according to the 
feeling which animates them; the mobility of 
their physiognomy, which greatly increases 
the effect of words, the picturesqueness of their 
gestures, and in short the gracefulness of their 
whole exterior : thus, although not destined for 
orators by their sex or social position, they 
have all the power of the orator, and all his 
success, in their sphere, and in the circle of 
their activity. For none better know how to 
touch, persuade, and influence, which, I think, 
is the end and the perfection of eloquence. 

Men, then, who wish to acquire the art of 
speaking, must learn by study what most 
women do naturally; and in this respect those 
whose temperament most approaches the femi- 
nine, in greater sensibility, and livelier im- 



, ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 63 

pressionableness, will have less difficulty than 
others, and will succeed better. 

However, as the man who speaks in public 
has to express loftier ideas, general notions, and 
more extensive combinations, which imply 
depth, — penetration of mind, and reflective 
power, — qualities very scarce among women, 
— he will never be able to expound these sub- 
jects, the result of abstraction and meditation, 
with grace of feeling and easiness of language 
spontaneously, and by nature. Here art must 
supply what nature refuses ; by diligent labour, 
by exercises multiplied without end, the diction 
must be rendered pliable, the speech disci- 
plined, and broken in, that it may become an 
amenable instrument which, obedient to the 
least touch of the will, and the lightest chal- 
lenge of thought, furnishes instantly a copious 
style, seeming to flow spontaneously, the 
result nevertheless of the subtlest art ; like 
fountains which, with great cost and magnifi- 
cence, carry the waters of our rivers into our 
squares, yet appear to pour forth naturally. 
Thus the words of the orator, without seeming 
to engage his attention, by dint of toil and of 
art, and this even on the most abstract subjects, 



64 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. , 

ought to attain a limpid and an easy flow, in 
order to bring to light the ideas of his mind, 
the images of his fancy, and the emotions of 
his heart. 

Such is the talent to be acquired ! Fit 
fabricando faber, says the adage; and it is the 
same with the journeyman of words, and the 
forger of eloquence. The iron must be often 
beaten, especially while it is hot, to give it 
shape ; so must we continually hammer lan- 
guage to become masters of it, and to fashion 
it, if we would become capable of speaking in 
public. It is not enough to learn the rules of 
style, the tropes and figures of rhetoric ; the 
use and proper application of them must be 
known ; and this cannot be learnt except by 
much speaking and much writing under the 
direction of an able master, who knows how to 
write and speak himself; for in this both pre- 
cept and example are necessary, and example 
is better than precept. 

He who has a capacity for public speaking 
will learn it best by listening to those who 
know how to speak well, and he will make 
more progress by striving to imitate them, than 
by all their instructions : as the young birds, 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 65 

on their first attempts to quit the parent nest, 
try at first their unskilful flight in the track of 
their parents, guided and sustained by their 
wings, and venture not except with eyes fixed 
on them, so a youth who is learning how to 
become a writer, follows his master with confi- 
dence w r hile imitating him, and in his first 
essays cleaves timidly at his heels, daring in 
the beginning to go only where he is led, but 
every day tries to proceed a little farther, 
drawn on, and, as it were, carried by his guide. 
It is a great blessing to have an able man for 
a master. It is w r orth more than all books ; 
for it is a living book, imparting life at the 
same moment as instruction. It is one torch 
kindling another. Then an inestimable advan- 
tage is gained, for, to the authority of the 
master, which youth is always more or less 
prone to dispute, is added the authority of 
talent which invariably prevails. He gladly 
receives the advice and guidance of the man 
whose superiority he recognises. This much 
is needed to quell the pride of youth, and 
cast down, or at least abate, its presumption 
and self-confidence. It willingly listens to 

F 



66 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

the master it admires, and feels happy in his 
society. 

I had this happiness, and I have always 
been deeply grateful to the Almighty who pro- 
cured it for me, and to the illustrious man who 
was the instrument of His beneficence. For 
nearly four years, at the Lyceum of Charle- 
magne and the Ecole Normale, I profited daily 
by the lessons and example of Monsieur Ville- 
main, then almost as young as his pupils ; and, 
if I know anything of the art of speaking and 
writing, I say it before the world, to him, after 
God, I owe it. 



§ 4. — That to speak well in public, one must first 
know how to write. 

You will never be capable of speaking pro- 
perly in public, unless you acquire such mas 
tery of your own thought as to be able to 
decompose it into its parts, to analyse it into 
its elements, and then, at need, to recompose, 
regather, and concentrate it again by a synthe- 
tical process. Now this analysis of the idea, 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 67 

which displays it, as it were, before the eyes of 
the mind, is well executed only by writing. 
The pen is the scalpel which dissects the 
thoughts, and never, except when you write 
down what you behold internally, can you 
succeed in clearly discerning all that is con- 
tained in a conception, or in obtaining its well- 
marked scope. You then understand your- 
self, and make others understand you. 

You should therefore begin by learning to 
write, in order to give yourself a just view of 
your own thoughts, before you venture yourself 
to speak. They who have not learned this 
first, speak in general badly and with difficulty ; 
unless, indeed, they have that fatal facility, a 
thousand times worse than hesitation or than 
silence, which drowns thought in floods of 
words, or in a torrent of copiousness, sweeping 
away good earth, and leaving behind sand and 
stones alone. Heaven keep us from those 
interminable talkers, such as are often to be 
found in southern countries, who deluge you, 
relatively to anything and to nothing, with a 
shower of dissertation and a downpouring of 
their eloquence! During nine tenths of the 
time, there is not one rational thought in the 

f 2 



68 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

whole of this twaddle, carrying along in its 
course every kind of rubbish and platitude. 
The class of persons who produce a speech 
so easily, and who are ready at the shortest 
moment to extemporise a speech, a dissertation, 
or a homily, know not how to compose a 
tolerable sentence ; and I repeat that, with such 
exceptions as defy all rule, he who has not 
learnt how to write will never know how to 
speak. 

To learn to write, one must write a great 
deal in imitation of those who know how, and 
under their guidance, just as one learns to 
draw or paint from good models, and by means 
of wise instruction. It is a school process, or 
a workshop process, if the phrase be preferred, 
and to a great extent mechanical and literal, 
but indispensable to, the student of letters. 
Thus the musician must wrest his fingers to 
pliancy, in order to execute easily and instan- 
taneously all the movements necessary for the 
quick production of sounds, depending on the 
structure of his instrument. Thus, likewise, 
the singer must become master of all the move- 
ments of his throat, and must long and unre- 
mittingly practise vocal exercises, until the will 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND* 69 

experiences no difficulty in determining those 
contractions and expansions of the windpipe 
which modify and inflect the voice in every 
degree and fraction of its scale. 

In the same manner, the future orator must, 
by long study and repeated compositions of a 
finished kind, handle and turn all expressions 
of language, various constructions of sentences, 
and endless combinations of words, until they 
have become supple and well-trained instru- 
ments of the mind, giving him no longer any 
trouble while actually speaking, and accommo- 
dating themselves unresistingly to the slightest 
guidance of his thought. 

With inverted languages, in which the sen- 
tence may assume several arrangements, this is 
more easy, for you have more than one way to 
express the same thought ; and thus there are 
more chances of expressing yourself, if not 
better, at least more conveniently. But in 
our language,* whose principal merit is clear- 
ness, and whose path is always the most direct 
and logical, — a quality which constitutes its 

* The English language holds, in this respect, a 
middle place between the French and the two great all- 
capable tongues of classic antiquity. 



70 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

value, — it is more difficult to speak well, and 
especially to extemporise, because there is but 
one manner of constructing the sentence, and 
if you have the misfortune of missing, at the 
outset, this direct and single way, you are in- 
volved in a by-path without a thoroughfare, 
and can emerge from it only by breaking 
through the enclosures or escaping across 
country. You are then astray, or lost in a 
quicksand, — a painful result for all concerned, 
for both him who speaks, and for those who 
listen. 

It is therefore indispensable to acquire a 
perfect mastery of your instrument, if you 
wish so to play upon it in public as to give 
pleasure to others, and avoid bringing confu- 
sion upon yourself. As the violinist commands 
with the touch every part of the string, and 
his fingers alight on the exact point in order 
to produce the required sound, so the mind 
of the orator ought to alight precisely on the 
right word, corresponding to each part of the 
thought, and to seize on the most suitable 
arrangement of words, in order to exhibit the 
development of its parts with due regard to 
each sentence as well as to the whole dis- 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 7* 

course ; an admirable and prodigious task in 
the quickness and certitude of the discernment 
is exercised at the moment of extemporising, 
and in the taste and the tact which it implies. 
And here especially are manifested the truth 
and use of our old classical studies, and of the 
method which, up to our own day, has been 
constantly employed, but now apparently de- 
spised or neglected, to the great injury of logic 
and eloquence. 

The end of that method is to stimulate and 
bring out the intelligence of youth by the 
incessant decomposition and recomposition of 
speech, — in other words, by the continual exer- 
cise of both analysis and synthesis ; and that 
the exercise in question may be the more 
closely argued and profitable, it is based 
simultaneously on two languages studied to- 
gether, the one ancient and dead, and not 
therefore to be learnt by rote, the other living 
and as analogous as possible to the first. The 
student is then made to account to himself 
for all the words of both, and for their bearings 
in particular sentences, in order to establish the 
closest parallel between them, the most exact 
equiponderance, and so to reproduce with all 



72 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

attainable fidelity the idea of one language in 
the other. Hence what are termed themes 
and versions, — the despair of idle school-boys, 
indeed, but very serviceable in forming and 
perfecting the natural logic of the mind; and, 
if carefully pursued for several years is the 
best way of teaching the unpractised and 
tender reason of youth all the operations of 
thought, — a faculty which, after all, keeps 
pace with words, and can work and manifest 
itself only by means of the signs of language. 

Superficial philosophers imagine that the 
object of this protracted trial, which occupies 
the finest years of youth, is to learn Latin or 
Greek, and then they exclaim that the result is 
not worth either the trouble or the time which 
it costs, and that, if comparing one language 
with another be desirable, it would be more 
profitable to teach children modern and spoken 
tongues which might hereafter be of use to 
them in life. Such persons would be quite 
right if this were the only end in view ; for 
doubtless, French or German would be more 
serviceable for travel, trade, or anything of 
that nature. 

But there is another object which these per- 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 73 

sons do not see, although it is the main object: 
which is to teach thinking to individuals who 
are destined to work in social life by their 
thought, — -to fashion labourers of the mind 
to the functions of intelligence, as an appren- 
tice or handicraftsman is fashioned to material 
functions and bodily toil. As these last are 
taught to use their tools, and therefore to know 
them thoroughly and handle them skilfully, in 
like manner the former must also learn per- 
fectly the implements of their calling, and 
tools of their craft, in order to use them ably 
on all possible occasions. Now the necessary 
instrument, — thought's indispensable tool, — 
is language ; and therefore, although people 
speak naturally and almost without any teach- 
ing, merely through living together, yet if 
a person wish to become an able workman of 
speech, and consequently of thought, as if he 
sought to be an able locksmith or a skilful 
mason, he must get instruction in the pro- 
cesses of art, and be initiated in the rules 
and methods which make it easier and more 
efficient. 

This is obtained by the study of languages 
which is the object of classical pursuits. From 



74 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

the elementary class to the " humanities," it 
is one course of logic by means of compa- 
rative grammar, — and it is the only logic 
of which youth is capable. It is the easiest 
training of thought by and through words, 
its material signs. A youth is thus taught 
for several years to learn the connections of 
ideas by the relations of words, which he 
is continually fashioning and re-fashioning ; 
and while learning to form sentences, ever 
with a thought in view T , the details of which 
he must explain and convey, he becomes used 
to analysis and combination, and executes, in 
the humble functions of grammar, a prelude 
to the highest operations of science, which, 
after all, are but the decomposition and mar- 
shalling of ideas. 

Who does not at once see w T hat facility 
the mind acquires by this perpetual comparison 
of the terms and idioms of two languages, 
which must be made to fit each other, and to 
what a degree thought becomes refined and 
subtle, in the presence of some idea w T hich 
has to be expressed ? the phrases of two lan- 
guages are measured and weighed incessantly ; 
they are compared, each with each, and each 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. /O 

with the idea, to ascertain which will render 
it best. 

The efforts are not useless which are made 
by these youthful minds who thus, day after 
day, wrestle with the thoughts of the most 
illustrious writers of antiquity, in order to un- 
derstand and translate them. How great a 
privilege to commune daily with the exalted 
reason, the noble ideas, and the splendid diction 
of those great and noble minds ! How great 
the advantage derived from such an intercourse, 
and how great the intellectual gain in such a 
company, and daily familiarity ! Then what a 
pleasure to have found an equivalent term, and 
to have transferred into one's own language, with 
the same vigour or the same delicacy, what some 
famous author has said in his ! What profit 
in this concussion of idioms, from which the 
spark of ideas is so often stricken forth, — this 
strife, unequal indeed, yet replete with a noble 
emulation, between a youth, trying the nascent 
strength of his thoughts, and some master 
mind whose works enlighten and guide hu- 
manity ! And finally, what more particularly 
concerns our subject, what facility of expres- 
sion, what aptitude for extemporaneous speak- 



76 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

ing, must not accrue from this habit, contracted 
from childhood, of handling and turning a 
sentence in every direction, until the most 
perfect form be found, of combining its terms 
in all ways, in order to arrive at the arrange- 
ment best fitted for the manifestation of the 
thought, of polishing each member of it by 
effacing asperities and smoothing crevices, of 
balancing one sentence against another, in 
order to give the whole, oneness, measure, 
harmony, a sort of music, rendering it as agree- 
able to the ear when spoken, as it is luminous 
to the mind by which it is meditated. 

No ; in no other way can the artist of words 
be ever formed ; and if a different method be 
attempted, as is somewhat signified at present, 
you will have, not artists, but handicraftsmen. 
Means should always be proportioned to ends. 
If you want orators, you must teach them how 
to speak, and you will not teach them otherwise 
than they have been taught heretofore. All 
our (French) great orators of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries have been formed in 
this manner, and I am not aware that there 
have ever been greater writers in the w T orld, or 
that the glory of France in this particular has 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 77 

been excelled. Let this splendour of civilisa- 
tion, this blooming forth of the mind in poetry, 
literature, and eloquence, which have always 
been the brightest crown and most beautiful 
garland of humanity on earth, be once aban- 
doned, in favour of conquest, and of the riches 
produced by industry and commerce, — which 
are much to be admired, no doubt, but, after 
all, minister more to body than to soul, 
— be it so ; we shall perhaps become more 
learned in material things, and certainly more 
wealthy ; we shall have more ways of winning 
money and of losing it, more ways of enjoying 
earthly life, and therefore of wearing out, and 
perchance of degrading it : but shall we be the 
happier ? This is not certain. Shall we be 
the better ? — less certain still ; but what is 
certain, is, that the life of human society or 
civilisation, however gilt, will be less beautiful, 
less noble, and less glorious. 

There is another practice which strikingly 
conduces towards facilitating expression and 
towards perfecting its form ; we mean the 
learning by heart of the finest passages of great 
writers, and especially of the most musical 
poets, so as to be able to recite them at a single 



78 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

effort, at moments of leisure, or during a 
solitary walk, when the mind so readily falls 
back upon its own resources. This practice, 
adopted in all schools, is particularly advanta- 
geous in rhetoric, and during the bright years 
of youth. At that age it is easy and agreeable, 
and he who aspires to the art of speaking 
ought never to neglect it. Besides furnishing 
the mind with all manner of fine thoughts, well 
expressed and well linked together, and thus 
nourishing, developing, and enriching it, it has 
the additional advantage of filling the under- 
standing with graceful images, of forming the 
ear to the rhythm and number of the period, 
and of obtaining a sense of the harmony of 
speech, which is not without its own kind of 
music ; for ideas, and even such as are the 
most abstract, enter the mind more readily, and 
sink into it more deeply, when presented in a 
pleasing fashion. By dint of reading the 
beautiful lines of Corneille and Racine, 
Bossuet's majestic and pregnant sentences, the 
harmonious and cadenced compositions of 
Fenelon and Massillon, one gradually and with- 
out effort acquires a language approaching theirs 
and imitates them instinctively through the na- 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 79 

tural attraction of the beautiful, and the pro- 
pensity to reproduce whatever pleases ; and at 
last, by repeating this exercise daily for years, 
one attains a refined taste of the delicacies of 
language and the shades of style, just as a 
palate accustomed to the flavour of the most 
exquisite viands can no longer endure the 
coarser. But what is only a disadvantage in 
bodily taste, at least under certain circumstances, 
is always beneficial to the literary taste, which 
should seek its nutriment, like the bee, in the 
most aromatic portions of the flower, in order 
to combine them into delicious and perfumed 
honey. 

By this process is prepared, moreover, in the 
imaginative part of the understanding, a sort of 
capacity for the oratorical form, for the shaping 
of sentences, w 7 hich I cannot liken to anything 
better than to a mould carefully prepared, and 
traced with delicate lines and varied patterns, 
into w r hich the stream of thought, flowing full 
of life and ardour from a glowing mind in the fire 
of declamation or composition, becomes fixed 
even while it is being cast, as metal in a state 
of fusion becomes instantaneously a beautiful 
statue. Thus the oratorical diction should be 



80 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

cast, all of one piece, by a single throw, in order 
to exhibit a beautiful and a living unity. But 
for this a beautiful mould is indispensable, and 
the young orator, who must have further re- 
ceived from nature the artistic power, cannot 
form within him that mould save with the 
assistance of the great masters and by imitating 
them. Genius alone is an exception to this 
rule, and genius is rare. 

The best rhetorical professors, those who are 
veritably artists of speech, and who seek to 
fashion others to their own likeness, recommend 
and adopt this exercise largely ; it is irksome 
to the indolent, but it amply indemnifies the 
toil which it exacts by the fruits which it brings. 
There is, besides, a way of alleviating the 
trouble of it, and that is, to read and learn 
select pages of our great authors, while stroll- 
ing under the shades of a garden or through 
some rich country, when nature is in all her 
brilliancy. You may then recite them aloud in 
such beautiful scenery, the impressions of which 
deliriously blend with those of eloquence and 
song. Every young man of talent or literary 
taste has made the experiment. During 
the spring time of life, there is a sin- 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 81 

gular charm in the spring time of nature ; 
and the redundance of fresh life in a youthful 
soul trying its own powers in thought, in 
painting, or in poesy, is marvellously and in- 
stinctively wooed into sympathy with that 
glorious life of the world around, whose ferti- 
lising virtue evokes his genius, while it enchants 
his senses by the subtlest emotions, and en- 
riches his imagination with varied pictures and 
brilliant hues. 

Moreover, — and this is a privilege of youth, 
which has its advantages as well as its inconve- 
niences, — poetry and eloquence are never 
better relished, that is, never with greater 
delight and love, than at this age, in the dawn 
of the soul's life, amidst the first fruits of the 
imagination and the heart's innocence, in the 
opening splendours of the ideal, which seem 
to the understanding as a rising sun, tinging 
and illumining all things with its radiant fires. 
The beauty that is understood and that which 
is merely sensible wondrously harmonise, they 
give each other enhancement and relief; or, to 
speak more truly, material beauty is appreciated 
only through the reflected light of mental 

G 



82 ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 

beauty, and as the rays emitted by an idea 
illuminate and transfigure nature's forms and 
nature's life, — so nature, on the other hand, 
while it lovingly receives the lustre of some 
heavenly thought, refracts it gloriously in its 
prisms, and multiplies, while reflecting its 
beams. 

All this the youthful orator, or he who has 
the power to become one, will feel and ex- 
perience, according to his nature and his cha- 
racter, as he awakens the echoes of some beau- 
tiful scene with the finest accents of human 
eloquence or poetry. While impressing these 
more deeply in his memory, by help of the 
spots wherein he learns them, which will add 
to and hereafter facilitate his recollections, he 
will imbibe unconsciously a twofold life, the 
purest and sublimest life of humanity, and that 
great life of nature which is the thought of 
the Almighty diffused throughout creation. 
These two great lives, that of man and that of 
nature, which spring from the same source, and 
thither return, blended without being con- 
founded within him, animating and nourishing 
his own life, the life of his mind and of his 



ACQUIRED QUALITIES OF MIND. 83 

soul, will yet draw forth from his bosom, from 
his poet's or orator's heart, a stream of eloquence 
or of song which will run an imperishable 
course. 



g 2 



84 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PHYSICAL QUALITIES OF THE ORATOR, 
NATURAL AND ACQUIRED. 

It is not enough for the orator to have ideas 
and to know how to express them, imparting 
the most graceful turn to his diction, and pour- 
ing forth copious words into the form of a 
musical and sonorous period ; he must further 
know how to articulate his speech, how to 
pronounce and deliver his discourse. He 
must have propriety of voice and gesture, or 
the oratorical action, — a thing of immense 
importance to success in eloquence, in which 
nature, as in everything, has a considerable 
share, but art may play a great part. Here, 
then, also is to be developed a natural 
predisposition, and a certain skill is to be 
acquired. 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 85 

§ I.— The Voice. 

The voice, including all the organs which 
serve to produce or modify it, is the speaker's 
chief instrument ; and its quality essentially 
depends, in the first instance, upon the forma-, 
tion of the chest, the throat, and mouth. Art 
can do little to ameliorate this formation, but 
it can do much to facilitate and strengthen 
the organic movements in all that regards 
breathing, the emission of sound, and pro- 
nunciation. These matters ought to be the 
object of a special study. 

It is very important, in speaking as in sing- 
ing, to know how to send forth and how to 
husband the breath, so as to spin lengthened 
sounds and deliver a complete period, without 
being blown, and without breaking a sentence 
already begun, or a rush of declamation by a 
gasp, — needful, indeed, for lungs that have 
failed, but making a sort of disagreeable gap 
or stoppage. 

Care should also be taken not to speak too 
fast, too loud, or with too much animation at 
the outset ; for if you force your voice in the 
beginning you are presently out of breath, or 



86 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 

your voice is cracked or hoarse, and then you 
can no longer proceed without repeated efforts 
which fatigue the hearers and exhaust the 
speaker. All these precautions, which appear 
trivial, but which are really of high importance, 
are learned by labour, practice, and personal 
experience. Still it is a very good thing to be 
w r arned and guided by the experience of others, 
and this may be ensured advantageously by 
frequent recitations aloud under the direction 
of some master of elocution. 

Enough stress is not laid on these things, if, 
indeed, they are attended to at all, in the 
schools of rhetoric, in literary establishments, 
and in seminaries, — wherein orators, neverthe- 
less, are expected to be formed. Scarce any 
but actors now-a-days trouble themselves about 
them, and that is the reason we have so few 
men in the liberal professions who know how 
to speak, or even to read or recite a discourse 
rightly. 

On this point the ancients had a great advan- 
tage over us ; they attached far more import- 
ance than we do to oratorical action, as we see 
in the treatises of Cicero and Quintilian. It 
was with them one half of eloquence at the 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 87 

least ; and it is said that Demosthenes made it 
the orator's chief quality. They, perhaps, went 
too far in this respect ; and it came, doubtless, 
of their having to speak before the multitude, 
whose senses must be struck, whose passions 
must be excited, and on whom power and bril- 
liancy of voice have immense effect. As for 
us, we fall into the contrary extreme, and fre- 
quently our orators, even those most distin- 
guished in point of style, do not know how to 
speak their speeches. We are so unused to 
beauty of form and nobility of air, that we are 
amazed when we meet them. There is a cer- 
tain orator of our day who owes his success 
and reputation merely to these advantages. 
On the other hand, these alone are too little ; 
we miss much when a fine elocution and an 
elegant or splendid delivery carry off common- 
place thoughts and expressions, more full of 
sound than of sense. This is quickly perceived 
in the perusal of those harangues which pro- 
duced so great an effect when delivered, and in 
which scarcely any of the emotions experienced 
in listening to them is recovered after they 
have once been fixed warm, as it were, on 



88 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 

paper by the reporter's art. The spell of the 
oratorical action is gone from them. 

The modulation of the voice proceeds prin- 
cipally from the larynx, which produces and 
modifies it almost without limit, by expansion 
and contraction. First, then, we have the 
formation of the larynx, with its muscles, 
cartilages, membranes, and tracery, which are 
to the emission of vocal sound what the invo- 
lutions of the brain probably are, instrumentally, 
in the operations of thought. But, in the one 
case as in the other, the connection of the 
organs with the effects produced entirely escapes 
us ; and although we are continually availing 
ourselves of the instrument, we do not perceive 
in any manner the how of its ministrations. It 
is only by use, and experiments often repeated 
that w 7 e learn to employ them with greater 
ease and power, and our skill in this respect 
is wholly empirical. The researches of the 
subtlest anatomy have given us no discovery in 
the matter. All that we have ascertained is, 
that every voice has its natural bell-tone, which 
makes it a bass voice, a tenor, or a soprano, 
each with intermediate gradations. The middle 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 89 

voice, or tenor, is the most favourable for 
speaking ; it is that which maintains itself the 
best, and which reaches the farthest when well 
articulated . It is also the most pleasing, the 
most endearing, and has the largest resources 
for inflection, because, being in the middle of 
the scale, it rises or sinks with greater ease, 
and leans itself better to either hand. It there- 
fore commands a greater variety of intonations, 
which hinders monotony of elocution, and re- 
awakens the attention of the hearer, so prone 
to doze. 

The upper voice, exceedingly clear at first, 
is continually tending towards a scream. It 
becomes harsh as it proceeds, and at last attains 
to the falsetto and nasal. It requires great 
talent, great liveliness of thought, language, 
and elocution to compensate or redeem this 
blemish. One of the most distinguished 
orators of our time is an example in point. 
He used to succeed in obtaining a hearing for 
several hours together, in spite of his lank and 
creaking voice, — a real victory of mind over 
matter. 

A bass voice is with difficulty pitched high, 
and continually tends back. Grave and ma- 



90 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 

jestic at the outset, it soon grows heavy and 
monotonous ; it has magnificent chords, but, if 
long listened to, produces frequently the effect 
of a drone, and soon tires and lulls to sleep 
by the medley of commingling sounds. What, 
then, if it be coarse, violent, uttered with 
bursts ? Why, it crushes the ear, if it thunders 
in too confined an apartment ; and if it breaks 
forth amidst some vast nave, where echoes 
almost always exist, the billows of sound re- 
verberating from every side, blend together, 
should the orator be speaking fast, and the 
result is a deafening confusion, and a sort of 
acoustic chaos. 

It is an advantage, then, to a speaker to 
have a middle voice, since he has the greater 
play for expression in its more numerous in- 
flections. It is easy to understand how, by 
constant practice, by frequent and intelligent 
recitations under able guidance, a person may 
become master of these inflections, may pro- 
duce them at will, and raise and lower his 
voice in speaking as in singing, either gra- 
dually or abruptly, from tone to tone, up to 
the very highest, according to the feeling, the 
thought, or the emotions of the mind. Between 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 91 

the acts of the mental life and those of the 
organs which are subservient to them there is 
a natural correspondence and an inborn ana- 
logy, by virtue of the human constitution, 
which consists of a soul in union with a body \ 
and, for this reason, all the impressions, agita- 
tions, shudderings, and throbbings of the heart, 
when it is stirred by the affections and the 
passions, no less than the subtlest acts, the 
nimblest operations of the intelligence — in a 
word, all the modifications of the moral life 
should find a tone, an accent in the voice, as 
well as a sign in language, an accord, a pa- 
rallel, in the physical life, and in its means of 
expression. 

In all cases, whatever be the tone of the 
voice, bass, tenor, or soprano, — what most 
wins upon the hearers, what best seizes and 
most easily retains their attention, is what may 
be called a sympathetic voice. It is difficult 
enough to say in what it consists ; but what 
very clearly characterises it, is the gift of 
causing itself to be attended to. It is a cer- 
tain power of attraction which draws to it the 
hearer's mind, and on its accents hangs his 
attention. It is a secret virtue which is in 



92 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 

speech, and which penetrates at once, or little 
by little, through the ear to the mind or into 
the heart of those who listen, charms them, 
and holds them beneath the charm, to such a 
degree that they are disposed, not only to 
listen, but even to admit what is said, and to 
receive it with confidence. It is a voice which 
inspires an affection for him who speaks, and 
puts you instinctively on his side, so that his 
words find an echo in the mind, repeating 
there what he says, and reproducing it easily 
in the understanding and the heart. 

A sympathetic voice singularly helps the 
effect of the discourse, and is, the best, and 
most insinuating of exordiums (introductions). 
I know an orator who has, among other qualities, 
this in his favour, and who, every time he 
mounts the pulpit, produces invariably a pro- 
found sensation by his apostolic countenance, 
and by the very first sounds of his voice. 

Whence comes, above all others, this quality 
which can hardly be acquired by art ? First, 
certainly from the natural constitution of the 
vocal organ, as in singing; but, next to this, 
the soul may contribute much towards it by 
the feelings and thoughts which actuate it, 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 93 

and by the efforts which it makes to express 
what is felt, and to convey it to others. There 
is something sympathetic in the lively and 
sincere manifestation of any affection ; and 
when the hearer sees that the speaker is really 
moved, the emotion gains upon him by a sort 
of contagion, and he begins to feel with him 
and like him : as two chords vibrating in unison. 
Or, again, if a truth be unfolded to him with 
clearness, in good order, and fervently, and if 
the speaker show that he understands or feels 
what he says, the hearer, all at once enlight- 
ened and sharing in the same light, acquiesces 
willingly, and receives the words addressed to 
him with pleasure. In such cases the power 
of 'conviction animates, enlivens, and trans- 
figures the voice, rendering it agreeable and 
effective by virtue of the expression, just as a 
lofty soul or a great mind exalts and embel- 
lishes an ordinary and even an ugly counte- 
nance. 

The best way in which an orator can impart 
to his voice the sympathetic power, even when 
he may happen not to have it naturally, is to 
express, vividly whatever he says, and conse- 
quently to feel it well himself, in order to make 



94 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 

others feel it. Above all, the way is, to have 
great benevolence, great charity in the heart, 
and to love to put them in practice, for nothing 
gives more of sympathy to the voice than real 
goodness. 

Here the precepts of art are useless. We 
cannot teach emotion, nor quick feelings, nor 
the habit of throwing ardour and transport into 
word and action; it is the 'pectus (heart) 
which accomplishes all this, and it is the pec- 
tus also which makes the orator — Pectus est 
quod disertum facit. For which reason, while 
we admit the great efficacy of art and precept 
in rendering the voice supple, in disciplining 
it, in making it obedient, ready, capable of 
traversing all the degrees of inflexion, and 
producing each tone ; and while we recommend 
those who desire to speak in public to devote 
themselves to this preliminary study for the 
formation of their instrument, like some skilful 
singer or practised actor, we must still remind 
them that the best prepared instrument remains 
powerless and dead unless there be a soul to 
animate it ; and that even without any culture, 
without preparation, without this gymnastic 
process, or this training of the vocal organs, 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 95 

whoever is impelled to speak by feeling, by 
passion, or by conviction, will find spontaneously 
the tone, the inflexions, and all the modifica- 
tions of voice which can best correspond with 
what he wishes to express. Art is useful 
chiefly to reciters, speakers from memory, and 
actors, and thus, it is not to be denied, much 
effect may also be produced by the illusion of 
the natural. Still, it is after all an illusion 
only, a semblance of nature, and thus a thing 
of artifice ; and nature itself will always be 
superior to it. 

For the same reason an extemporised ad- 
dress, if it be such as it ought to be, is more 
effective, and more impressive, than a recited 
discourse. It partakes less of art, and the voice 
vibrating and responsive to what the speaker 
feels at the moment, finds naturally the tone 
most proper, the true inflexions, and genuine 
expression. 

§ 2— ■Utterance. 

Utterance is a very important condition of 
being audible, and consequently of being 
attended to. It determines the voice, or the 



96 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 

vowel, by the modification which this last re- 
ceives from the consonant; it produces syllables, 
and by joining them together, gives the words, 
the series of which forms what is termed articu- 
late language. Man being organised for speech 
speaks naturally the language he hears, and as he 
hears it. His instinctive and original pronun- 
ciation depends on the formation of the vocal 
organs, and on the manner in which those around 
him pronounce. Therefore, nature discharges 
here the chief function, but art may also exert 
certain power either to correct or abate organic 
defects or vicious habits, or to develope and 
perfect favourable aptitudes. Demosthenes, 
the greatest orator of antiquity, whose very 
name continues to be the symbol of eloquence, 
is a remarkable case in point. Everybody is 
aware that by nature he had a difficulty of ut- 
terance almost amounting to a stammer, w 7 hich 
he succeeded in overcoming by frequently de- 
claiming on the sea-shore with pebbles in his 
mouth. The pebbles obliged him to redouble 
his exertions to subdue the rebellious organ, 
and the noise of the surge, obliging him to 
speak more loudly and more distinctly in order 
to hear his own words, accustomed him to the 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 97 

still more deafening uproar of the people's 
mighty voice in the market-place. 

Professors of elocution lay great stress on 
the manner of utterance, and they are right. 
To form and "break" the organs to a distinct 
and agreeable utterance, much practice is re- 
quisite, under able tuition, and such as affords 
an example of what it inculcates. 

First, there is the emission of the voice,- — 
which the practitioner should know how to 
raise and lower through every degree within 
its range, — and in each degree to increase or 
diminish, heighten or soften its power accord- 
ing to circumstances, but always so as to pro- 
duce no sound that is false or disagreeable to 
the ear. 

Then comes articulation, which should be 
neat, clear, sharp, — yet unexaggerated, or else 
it will become heavy, harsh, and hammer-like, 
rending the ear. 

Next to this the prosody of the language 
must be observed, giving its longs and its 
shorts ; as in singing, the minims, semibreves, 
quavers, and crotchets. This imparts to the 
sentence variety, movement, and measure. A 
written or spoken sentence admits, indeed, 

H 



98 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED 'QUALITIES. 

strictly of notation as well as a bar of music ; 
and when this notation is followed by the 
voice of the speaker, naturally or artificially, 
the discourse gains in expression and plea- 
santness. 

Moreover there is accentuation, and em- 
phasis, which mark the paramount tone of each 
sentence, word, and syllable, on which the 
chief stress should be laid. Art may here 
effect somewhat, especially in the enunciation 
of words ; but as regards the emphasis of the 
sentence, it is impressed principally by the 
palpitation of the soul, thrilling with desire, 
feeling, or conviction. 

Finally, there is the declamatory movement, 
which, like the measure in music, should adapt 
itself to what is to be conveyed, now grave and 
solemn, now light, and rapid, with a guiding 
rein, slackening or urging the pace, becoming 
nervous or gentle, according to the occasion ; 
bursting forth at times with the vehemence of 
a torrent, and at times flowing gently with the 
clearness of a stream, or even trickling, drop 
by drop, like water noiselessly filtered; which, 
at last, fills the vessel that receives it, or wears 
out the stone on which it falls. 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 99 

In vocal speech, as in vocal music, there are 
an infinitude of gradations ; and the orator 
should have the feeling, the instinct, or the 
acquired habit by which he can produce all 
these effects ; and this implies in him a special 
taste and tact which art may develope, but can 
never implant. And thus there is need of 
caution here, as in many other cases, not to 
spoil nature by science, while endeavouring to 
perfect her. School precepts may teach a 
manner, a certain mechanical skill in elocution, 
but can never impart the sacred fire which gives 
life to speech, nor those animated, delicate, 
just feelings of an excited or impassioned soul, 
and of a mind convinced, which grasps on the 
instant the peculiarity of expression and of 
voice which are most appropriate. 

In general the masters of elocution and 
enunciation somewhat resemble M. Jourdain's 
professor of philosophy, who shows him how to 
do with difficulty, and badly, what he used to 
do naturally and well. We all speak prose, 
and not the worst prose, from the outset. It is 
pretty nearly the same with the enunciation of 
a discourse ; and with the utterance, the accen- 
tuation, and the management of speech. The 

h 2 



100 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 

best guides in these matters, the implied pre- 
dispositions, are nature and the inspiration of 
the moment ; while example is the most pro- 
fitable kind of teaching. He who has a turn 
for eloquence will learn how to speak by hear- 
ing good speaking. It is orators who princi* 
pally form orators. 



§ 3. — Oratorical Action. 

Under this title are particularly comprised 
the movements of the countenance, the carriage 
and postures of the body, and above all ges- 
ticulation ; — three things which naturally ac- 
company speech, and in an extraordinary de- 
gree augment its expressiveness. Here, again, 
nature achieves a great deal ; but art also assists, 
especially in the management of the body, and 
in gesticulation. 

An idea may be derived of what the coun- 
tenance of the speaker adds to his address, from 
the instinctive want we experience, of beholding 
him, even when he is already sufficiently 
audible. Not only all ears, but all eyes like- 
wise are bent upon the speaker. The fact is 
that man's face, and, above all, his eye, is the 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 101 

mirror of his soul ; also, in the lightning of 
the glance, there is a flush of lustre which 
illumines what is said ; and on this account it 
was unspeakably to be regretted that Bour- 
daloue should have spoken with his eyes closed. 
One of the disadvantages of a recited speech 
is to quench, or at least to enfeeble and dim 
the brilliancy of the discourse- 
Besides which the rapid contractions and 
dilatations of the facial muscles, — which are 
each moment changing and renewing the phy- 
siognomy, by forming upon the visage a sort of 
picture, analogous to the speaker's feeling, or 
to his thought, — these signs of dismay or joy, 
of fear or hope, of affliction of heart or of 
calmness, of storm or serenity, all these causes 
which successively plough and agitate the 
countenance, like a sea shaken by the winds 
and which impart so much movement and life 
to the physiognomy that it becomes like a 
second discourse which doubles the force of 
the first, — ought to be employed by the orator 
as so many means of effect, mighty upon the 
crowd which they strike and carry away. But 
it is under nature's dictate that he will best em- 
ploy them ; and the best, the only method which 



102 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 

it behoves him to follow in this respect, is to 
grasp powerfully, and to conceive thoroughly, 
what he has to unfold or to describe ; and then 
to say it with all the sincerity and all the fervour 
of conviction and emotion. The face w r ill play 
its own part spontaneously ; for, as the various 
movements of the countenance are produced of 
their own accord in the ratio of the feeling ex- 
perienced, whenever you are really moved and 
under the influence of passion, the face natu- 
rally adapts the emotion of the words, as these 
that of the mind ; and art can be of little avail 
under these circumstances. 

Let us, in truth, not forget that the orator is 
not an actor, w T ho plays a fictitious character 
by putting himself in another's position. He 
must, by dint of art, enter into the situation 
which he represents, and thus he has no means 
of becoming impressed or moved except by the 
study of his model, and the meditation of his 
part. He must, accordingly, compose his voice 
as well as his countenance, and it requires 
great cleverness and long habit to imitate by 
the inflexions of the voice, and the play of the 
physiognomy, the true and spontaneous feeling 
of nature. The actor, in a word, is obliged to 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 103 

imitate morally as well as physically; and on 
this account, even when most successful, when 
most seeming to feel what he impersonates, as 
he in general feels it not, something of this is 
perceptible ; and it is the most consummate 
actor's fate, that, through a certain illusion of 
the imagination his acting is never more than 
an imitation. Hence the vice, and hence the 
disfavour of that profession, notwithstanding 
all the talent and study which it requires : there 
is always something disingenuous in saying 
what you do not think, in manifesting senti- 
ments which are not your own. 

The orator, on the contrary, unless he chooses 
to become the advocate of falsehood, has truth 
always on his side. He must feel and think 
whatever he says, and consequently he may 
allow his face and his eyes to speak for them- 
selves. As soon as his soul is moved, and 
becomes fervid, it will find immediate expres- 
sion in his countenance and in his whole person, 
and the more natural and spontaneous is the 
play of his physiognomy, the more effect it 
will produce. It is not the same, or not to the 
same degree, with regard to the movements of 
the body and to gesticulation. The body, 



104 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 

indeed, and limbs of the speaker, animated by 
a soul expressing itself fervidly, will represent 
naturally to a certain degree, by their outward 
movements the inward movements of the mind. 
But the machinery, if I may say so, is more 
complicated, heavier, and more cumbersome, 
because matter predominates here ; it is not 
easy to move the whole body elegantly, and 
particularly the arms, although the most mobile 
organs. How many have a tolerably good 
notion of speaking, and yet cannot move their 
arms and hands properly, so as to present at 
once postures graceful and in accordance with 
their words. It is in this department of action 
that speakers most betray their inexperience 
and embarrassment ; and spoil the effect of the 
best speech by the inappropriateness of the 
gestures; and the puerility or affectation of the 
attitudes used. 

Efforts are worth making, then, to acquire 
beforehand good habits in this respect, in order 
that the body, trained with deliberation to the 
impulse of the words, and to adapt itself to 
their inspiration, may execute of its own accord, 
and gracefully, the most expressive movements, 
may itself take the most appropriate attitudes, 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 105 

and not have its limbs working ineffectually or 
untowardly, with the arms motionless and tied 
down the figure, or the hands nailed to the 
pulpit or the platform balustrade. An abrupt 
or jerky gesticulation is specially to be avoided, 
such as by a regular swing up and down, down 
and up again, of the speaker's arms, which gives 
the appearance of two hatchets incessantly at 
work. Generally speaking, moderation is 
better than superfluity of gesticulation. Nothing 
is more wearisome to the audience than a 
violent delivery without respite; and next to a 
monotony of voice, nothing more readily puts 
it to sleep than a gesture for ever repeated, 
which marks with exactness each part of the 
period, as a pendulum keeps time. 

This portion of oratorical delivery, more im- 
portant than it is supposed, greatly attended to 
by the ancients, and too much neglected by the 
moderns, may be acquired by all the exercises 
which form the body, by giving it carriage and 
ease, grace of countenance and motion ; and 
still more by well-directed studies in elocution 
in what concerns gesture under a clever master. 
To this should be added the often-repeated 
study of the example of those speakers who 



106 PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 

are most distinguished for the quality in ques- 
tion, — which is only too rare at the present 
day. 

But what perhaps conduces more than all 
this to form the faculty mentioned is the fre- 
quenting of good company, — that is, of the so- 
ciety most distinguished for elegance of lan- 
guage and refinement of manners. Nothing 
can supply the place of this primary part of a 
man's education. In this medium the youth 
fashions himself, as it were, of his own accord, 
by the impressions he is every moment receiv- 
ing, and the instinctive imitation of what he 
sees and hears. It is the privilege of high so- 
ciety, and court manners to give this finish 
to education. There one learns to speak with 
correctness and grace, almost without study, 
by the mere force of habit; and if persons of 
quality combined with this facility of manner 
that science, which is to be acquired only by 
study, and the pow r er of reflection, w T hich is 
formed chiefly in solitude, — they would achieve 
oratorical successes more easily than other 
people. 

But they are, for the most part, deficient in 



PHYSICAL ACQUIRED QUALITIES. 107 

acquirements, — whereas learned and thinking 
men generally err in manner. 

To sum up : over and above the store of 
science and of knowledge indispensable to the 
orator, — who should be thoroughly acquainted 
with his subject, — the predispositions most 
needful in the art of speaking, and susceptible 
of acquisition, are — 

1. The habit of taking thought to pieces, 

and putting it together, — or analysis 
and synthesis. 

2. A knowledge of how to write correctly, 

clearly, and elegantly. 

3. A capacity for the handling of language 

at will and without effort, and for the 
sudden construction of sentences, with- 
out stoppages or faults. 

4. A power of ready and intelligent decla- 

mation. 

5. A neat, distinct, and emphatic utterance. 

6. A good carriage of body. 

7. An easy, expressive, and graceful gesticu- 

lation. 

8. And, above ail this, the manners and air 

of a gentleman, whether natural or 
acquired. 



108 



PART II. 



CHAPTER V. 

DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 

We have stated all the dispositions, natural 
or acquired which are necessary, to the orator. 
We proceed now to set him to work, and we 
shall consider him in all the steps of his task, 
and the successive processes which he has to 
employ, to carry it prosperously to com- 
pletion. 

It is perfectly understood that we make no 
pretence to the laying down of rules ; our 
object is not to promulgate a theory nor a 
didactic treatise. We are giving a few recom- 
mendations derived from our own experience, 
— and each person w r ill take advantage of them 



DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 109 

as he best may, adopting or omitting them 
according to his own bent or requirements. 

Each mind, inasmuch as it is a personality, 
has its individual character, its own life, which 
can never be another's, although it resembles 
all of its kind. If in the physical world there 
are no two things quite alike, still less do we 
look for oneness among intelligent and free 
creatures. Here, a still more wondrous variety 
prevails in consequence of a certain liberty which 
exists, and which acts upon these different 
natures, though limited to certain general con- 
ditions of developement and subject to the same 
laws. To this is due the originality of minds, 
which is, to the intellectual order, what respon- 
sibility is to the moral. 

But while fully granting this variety of action, 
springing from the nature, dispositions, and 
circumstances of each person, still after all, as 
w T e are of the same species and the same race, 
and as our mental and physical organisation 
is at the root the same, we must all, when in 
similar situations, act in a manner fundamen- 
tally analogous, although different as to form ; 
and for this reason, indications of a general 
nature, the result of a long and laborious 



110 DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 

experience, may, within a certain measure, 
prove useful to all, or at least to many. 

This it is which encourages us to unfold the 
experience of our own minds ; giving it for 
what it is, without imposing it on anybody, 
in the deeply sincere desire of doing a service 
to the young generation which comes after us, 
and sparing them the rocks and mishaps of a 
difficult navigation often accomplished by us. 

To speak in public is to address several per- 
sons at once, an assemblage incidentally or in- 
tentionally collected, for some purpose or other. 
Now this may be done under the most diverse 
circumstances, and for various objects, — and 
accordingly the discourse must be adapted both 
in matter and in form to these varying condi- 
tions. Yet are there requisites common to 
them all, which must be everywhere fulfilled, 
if the speaker would speak pertinently, and with 
any chance of success. 

In fact, the end of public speaking is to win 
the assent of the hearers, to imbue them with 
your own convictions, or at least to incline 
them to feel, to think, and to will according 
to your purpose, with reference to a particular 
subject. 



DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. Ill 

Hence, whenever you speak, and whatever 
the audience, there is something to be said 
which is indicated by the circumstances; there 
is the way of saying it, or the method and 
plan according to which you will unfold your 
thought; and finally there is the realisation of 
this plan by the actual discourse, composed and 
uttered on the instant before those whom you 
would persuade. Thus in an extemporaneous 
discourse there are three things to be con- 
sidered : — 

1st. The subject being supplied by the cir- 
cumstances, there is the preparation of the plan 
or the organisation of the discourse, by means 
of which you take possession of your subject. 

•2ndly. The transcript or impression of this 
plan (originally fixed on paper by the pen) in 
the head of the speaker, wherein it should be 
written in a living fashion. 

3rdly. The discourse itself, or the successive 
and, as far as possible, completely spoken 
realisation of the plan prepared. 

Sometimes the two first operations blend 
into one : — as, for example, you have to speak 
suddenly without having time to write your 
plan or to consider it. But when time is 



112 DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 

allowed, they should be separate, and each 
requires its own moment. 

We proceed to examine these three matters 
in succession. 



113 



CHAPTER VI. 

PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 

The preparation of a plan or the organization 
of a discourse implies, especially, a knowledge 
of the things about which you have to speak ; 
but a general knowledge is not enough; you 
may have a great quantity of materials, of docu- 
ments, and of information in your memory, and 
not be aware how to bring them to bear. It 
sometimes happens that those who know most, or 
have most matter in their heads, are the least 
capable of rightly conveying it. The over 
abundance of ideas, crushes the mind, and 
stifles it, just as the head is paralysed by a 
too great determination of blood, or a lamp is 
extinguished by an excess of oil. 

You must begin, therefore, by methodising 
what you know about the subject you wish to 
treat, and thus, in each discourse, you must 
adopt as your centre or chief idea, the point 

i 



114 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 

to be explained ; while the rest must be sub- 
ordinate to this idea, but in such a way as to 
constitute a sort of organism, having its head, 
its organs, its main limbs, and all the means of 
connection and of circulation by which the 
light of the paramount idea, emanating from the 
focus, may be communicated to the furthest 
parts, even to the last thought, and last word ; 
as in the human body the blood emerges from 
the heart, and is spread throughout all the 
tissues, animating and colouring the surface of 
the skin. 

Thus only will there be life in the discourse, 
because a true unity will reign in it, — that is a 
natural unity resulting from an interior deve- 
lopement, an unfolding from within, and not from 
an artificial gathering of heterogeneous mem- 
bers and their arbitrary juxtaposition. 

This constitutes the difference between living 
and dead words. These last may have a cer- 
tain brilliancy from the gorgeousness of the 
style or the elegance of the sentence, but after 
having for a moment charmed the ear, they 
leave the mind cold, and the heart empty. 
The speaker not being master of his subject, 
which he has not made his own by meditation, 



PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 115 

reflects or reverberates other people's ideas, 
without adding to them a particle of heat or 
life. It is a pale and borrowed light, which, 
like that of the moon, enables you to see 
vaguely and indistinctly, but neither warms nor 
fertilises ; possessing only a frigid and dead- 
ened lustre. 

Speakers of this kind, even when they ex- 
temporise, speak rather from memory than from 
the understanding or feelings. They repro- 
duce more or less easily shreds of what they 
have read or heard, — and they have exactly 
enough mind to effect this reproduction with a 
certain facility, which tends to fluency or to 
twaddle. They do not thoroughly know what 
they are speaking about ; they do not them- 
selves understand all they say, still less do 
they make others understand. They have not 
entered into their subject ; they have filled their 
apprehension with a mass of things relating to 
it, which trickle out gradually as from a reser- 
voir or through a tap which they open and shut 
at pleasure. Eloquence of this description is 
but so much plain water, or rather it is so much 
troubled water, bearing nothing along its pas- 
sage but words and the spectres of thoughts, 

I 2 



116 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 

and pouring into the hearer's mind, disgust, 
wearisomeness, and nausea. Silence, which 
would at least leave the desire of listening, 
were a hundredfold preferable ; but these spin- 
ners of talk, who give us phrases instead of 
thoughts, and exclamations instead of feelings, 
take away all wish to hear, and on the contrary, 
inspire a disgust for speaking itself. 

There is no way of avoiding this disadvantage 
except by means of a well- conceived, deeply- 
considered, and seriously-elaborated plan. He 
who knows not how to form such plan, will 
never speak in a living or an effective manner. 
He may become a rhetorician; but he will 
never be an orator. 

Let us, then, see by what process this found- 
ation of the orator's task must be laid ; for it 
is to a discourse what the architect's design is 
to a building. 

The plan of a discourse is the order of the 
things which have to be unfolded. You must 
therefore begin by gathering these together, 
whether facts or ideas, and examining each 
separately, in their relation to the subject or 
purport of the discourse, and in their mutual 
bearings w 7 ith respect to it. Next, after having 



PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 117 

selected those which befit the subject, and 
rejecting those which do not, you must marshal 
them around the main idea, in such a way as 
to arrange them according to their rank and 
importance, with respect to the result w 7 hich 
you have in view. But, what is worth still 
more than even this composition or synthesis, 
you should try, when possible, to draw forth, 
by analysis or deduction, the complete develope- 
ment of one single idea, which becomes not 
merely the centre, but the very principle of the 
rest. This is the best manner of explaining 
or developing, because existences are thus pro- 
duced in nature, and a discourse, to have its 
full value, and full efficiency, should imitate 
her, in her vital process, and perfect it by 
idealising that process. 

In fact, reason, when thinking and express- 
ing its thought, performs a natural function, 
like the plant which germinates, flowers, and 
bears fruit. It operates, indeed, according to 
a more exalted power, but it follows in the 
operation the same laws as all beings endued 
with life; and the methods of analysis and 
synthesis, of deduction and induction, essential 
to it, have their types and symbols in the vital 



118 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 

acts of organic beings, which all proceed like- 
wise by the way of expansion and contraction, 
unfolding and enfolding, diffusion and collec- 
tion. 

The most perfect plan is, therefore, the plan 
which organises a discourse upon the same 
principle that nature employs, in the formation 
of any being, fraught with life. It is the sole 
means of giving to oratory a real and natural 
unity, and, consequently, strength and beauty. 

This is doubtless the best method ; but you 
can often but make an approach towards it, 
depending on the nature of the subject and the 
circumstances in which you have to speak. 
Hence a few differences, which must be men- 
tioned, in the elaboration of the plan. 

In the first place, we give warning that we 
do not mean to concern ourselves with that 
popular eloquence which sometimes fulminates 
like a thunderbolt, amidst the anarchy of states, 
in riots, insurrections, and revolutions. Elo- 
quence of that sort has no time to arrange a 
plan ; it speaks according to the circumstances 
and, as it were, at the dictate of the winds by 
which it is borne along ; it partakes of that 
disorder which has called it forth, and this for 



PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 119 

the most part, constitutes its power, which is 
mighty to destroy. It acts after the fashion of 
a hurricane, which upsets everything in its 
course by the blind fury of the passions which 
it arouses, by the unreasoning wills which it 
carries with it, and yields no ray from the light 
of thought, nor charm from the beauty of style. 
This instinctive and not very intelligent kind 
of eloquence is to that of which we are treating, 
as the force of nature, when let loose in the 
earthquake or in great floods, is to the ordinary 
and regular laws of Providence, which produce, 
develope, and preserve whatever exists ; it is 
the force of the steam which bursts the boiler, 
and spreads disaster and death wherever it 
reaches ; whereas, when powerfully compressed 
within its proper limits, and directed with 
intelligence, it works regularly under the con- 
trol of a skilful hand, and toils orderly and in 
peace for the welfare of men. 

We have no recommendation, then, to offer 
to the orators of cabal rooms and riots, nor even 
to those who may be called on to resist or 
quell them. It is hard to make any suitable 
preparation in such emergencies, and, besides, 
they are fraught with so much of the unfore- 



120 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 

seen, that, in nine cases out of ten, all prepara- 
tion would be disconcerted. What can be done 
is what must be done, according to the moment; 
and, in general, it is the most passionate, the 
most violent, and he who shouts the loudest who 
carries the day. Moreover, there is nearly al- 
ways a species of fatality which prevails in 
these situations : the force of things crushes 
the force of men. It is a rock loosened from 
the mountain- side, and falling headlong, — a 
torrent swelling as it rushes onward, or the 
lava of a volcano overflowing: to endeavour 
to stay them is madness. All one can do is 
to protect oneself; the evil will be exhausted 
by its own course, and order will return after 
the storm. 

But in the normal state of society, — and it 
is for that state we write, — by the very fact of 
social organisation, and springing out of its 
forms, there are constantly cases in which you 
may be called to speak in public, on account of 
the position which you fill, or the duties which 
you discharge. Thus, committees will conti- 
nually exist, in which are discussed state or 
municipal interests, and deliberative resolutions 
are passed by a majority of votes, whatever 



PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 121 

may be the constitution or the power of such 
assemblies, — considerations with which we have 
no concern here. There will always be a 
council of state, general and borough councils, 
legislative assemblies, parliaments, and com- 
mittees of a hundred sorts. 

In the second place, there will always be 
tribunals where justice is dispensed, and where 
the interests of individuals, in collision with 
those of the public or with one another, have 
to be contended for, before judges whom you 
must seek to convince or persuade. 

There will alw T ays be a system of public 
teaching to enlighten and train the people, 
whether by the addresses of scientific men, 
who have to instruct the multitude in various 
degrees, and to inform them what is needed 
for the good guidance of public and of private 
life in temporal matters, or addresses made by 
the ministers of religion, who, teaching in the 
name of the Almighty, must unremittingly re- 
mind men of their last end, and of the best 
means with which to meet it, making their 
earthly and transitory interest subordinate to 
their celestial and everlasting happiness- 



122 PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 

Here, then, we have four great fields, in 
which men are daily called on to speak in 
public, in order there to discuss the gravest 
interests of society, of families, and of indivi- 
duals, or else to unfold truths more or less 
lofty, often hard to comprehend or to admit, 
but the knowledge or conviction of which, is of 
the highest moment to the welfare of society 
and persons. It is anything but immaterial, 
then, that men belonging to such callings, des- 
tined from day to day to debate on public ot 
private concerns, or to demonstrate the funda- 
mental truths of science and religion, should 
know how to do so with method, clearness, 
power, and gracefulness, — -in one word, with 
all the means of persuasion, — that they may 
not fail in their mission, and especially that 
they may disseminate and render triumphant 
in the minds of men, together with good sense 
and right reason, that justice, and truth, and 
those principles, in the absence of which nothing 
can be stable or durable among nations. This 
alone would show what importance for good or 
for evil the orator may acquire in society, since 
to his lot it falls to prepare, train, and control 



PREPARATION OF THE PLAN. 1*23 

almost all the resolutions of communities or of 
individuals, that can modify their present, or 
decide their future condition. 

Our remarks then will apply to four classes 
of speakers : — the political orator ; the forensic 
orator, whether magistrate or advocate ; the 
orator of education, or the professor; and the 
orator of the pulpit, or the preacher. In these 
four arenas, the political assembly, the sanc- 
tuary of justice, the academy, and the Church, 
extemporaneous speaking is daily practised, 
and is capable of the most salutary influence, 
when fraught with ability, life, and power, or, 
in other words, when performed with elo- 
quence. 



124 



CHAPTER VII. 

POLITICAL AND FORENSIC SPEAKING 
DISCUSSED. 

I will say but little of political and forensic 
speaking, because I have not been used to 
either, and my wish is to be the exponent of 
my own experience. I leave professional 
adepts to give their colleagues the best of all 
advice, that derived from actual practice. 
This would require details with which nothing 
but the exercise of public duties, or of the 
bench and bar themselves, could make us ac- 
quainted. I will therefore confine myself to a 
few general remarks derived from the theory of 
the oratorical art, as applied to the duties of 
the politician and advocate. 

The political orator may have two sorts of 
questions to treat — questions of principle, and 
questions of fact. 



POLITICAL AND FORENSIC SPEAKING. 125 

In the latter, which is the more ordinary case, 
at least among well constituted communities, 
whose legislation and government rest upon 
remote precedents and are fixed by experience, 
the plan of a discourse is easy to construct. 
With principles acknowledged by all parties, 
the only point is to state the matter, with the 
circumstances which qualify it, and the reasons 
which urge the determination demanded from 
the voice of the assembly. The law or custom 
to which appeal is made, constitutes the major 
premiss (as it is termed in Logic) ; the actual 
case, brought by the circumstances, within 
that law or those precedents, constitutes the 
minor premiss ; and the conclusion follows of 
its own accord. In order to carry away the 
assent of the majority, you describe the advan- 
tages of the proposed measure, and the inex- 
pediency of the opposite course, or of any other 
line. 

To treat such subjects properly, there needs 
no more than good sense, a certain business 
habit, and a clear conception of what you 
would say and what you demand. You must 
thoroughly know what you want, and how to 
express it. In my mind, this is the best 



126 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 

political eloquence, that is, business speaking, 
expounding the business clearly, succinctly, 
with a knowledge of the matter, saying only 
what is necessary, with tact and temperately, 
and omitting all parade of words and big ex- 
pressions, even those which embody sentiments, 
save now and then in the exordium and pero- 
ration, according to the case. It is in this way 
that men generally speak in the British Par- 
liament ; and these speeches are of some use ; 
they come to something, and carry business 
forward, or end it. Happy the nation which 
has no other sort of political eloquence ! Un- 
fortunately for us, another sort has prevailed in 
our own parliamentary assemblies. 

Among us, from the day that representative 
government was established, political dis- 
courses have almost invariably turned upon 
questions of principle: no well established and 
universally respected constitution, — no settled 
course of legislation confirmed by custom, — no 
recognised and admitted precedents, — things 
all of which strengthen the orator's position, 
because he has already decisions on which to 
rest, and examples to give him their support. 
Time has been almost always employed, or 



SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 127 

rather wasted, in laying down principles, or in 
trying to enforce what were advanced as 
principles. The constitution itself and, con- 
sequently, the organisation of society and 
government have always been subjects of dis- 
pute, and all our assemblies, — whatever the 
name with which they have been adorned, — 
have been directly or indirectly in the state of 
a constituent (or primary) body. 

Now, this is the most difficult situation for 
the orator, for the assemblies themselves, and 
for the country ; and experience has proved it, 
in spite of good speeches, and the reputation of 
orators of whom France is proud. 

In these cases, in fact, the speaker is greatly 
at a loss how to treat new and unexampled 
questions, except by foreign instances which 
are never exactly applicable to another country. 
His ideas, not being enlightened or supported 
by experience, remain vague and float in a 
kind of chaos ; and yet, as demonstration re- 
quires a basis of some sort, he is obliged to 
have recourse to philosophic theories, to 
abstract ideas which may always be disputed, 
which are often obscure and unintelligible to 
the majority of the hearers, and are impugned 



128 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 

by the votaries of hostile systems. Once 
launched into the ideas of philosophers the 
debate knows neither limits nor law. The 
most irreconcilable opinions meet and clash, 
and it is not always light which springs from 
their collision. On the contrary the longer 
the deliberation continues, the thicker the 
darkness becomes ; Parliament degenerates into 
an academy of philosophers, an arena of sophists 
and rhetoricians ; and, as something must be 
concluded, either because of the pressure of 
necessity, or in consequence of the wearisome- 
ness of the speeches, and the satiety of debate, 
the discussion is closed without the question 
having been settled, and the votes, at least 
those of the majority, are given, not in accord- 
ance with any convictions newly acquired, but 
with the signal of each voter's party. 

It is said that such a course is necessary in 
an assembly, if business is to be transacted ; 
and I believe it, since there would otherwise be 
no end of the deliberation. But it must be 
conceded to me withal, that to vote from confi- 
dence in party leaders, and because these have 
marked out the path to be pursued, is not a 
very enlightened way of serving one's country 



SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 129 

and discharging the trust reposed by a con- 
stituency. 

Unfortunately, decisions thus formed lead to 
nothing permanent, and are fatal both to assem- 
blies and to the nation. They establish 
nothing, because they are not held in serious 
regard by a community, divided like their 
Parliaments into majorities and minorities, 
which obtain the mastery in turn over each other. 
It comes to pass that what one government does 
the next cancels ; and as the battle is perpetu- I 
ally renewed, and parties competing for power 
attain it, in more or less rapid succession, every 
form of contradiction, within a brief space, 
appears and vanishes, each having sufficiently 
prevailed in rotation, to destroy its rival. 

Hence a profound discredit in public opinion 
for laws continually passed and continually 
needing to be passed again, and thus rendered 
incapable of taking root in the minds of the 
citizens or securing their reverence. Legis- 
lation becomes a species of chaos in which 
nothing can be solidly fixed, because it abounds 
with elements of revolt which combat and dis- 
organise whatever is produced there. 

Moreover, — and this too is a calamity for 



130 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 

the country, — as parties are, for the most part, 
not unevenly matched, and as the majority 
depends on a few votes, in order to come to a 
decision so habitually uncertain, it is necessary, 
on important occasions, to make a fusion or 
coalition of parties in one way or another by 
the lures of private interest, which can be 
effected only through mutual concessions ; and 
then, when unanimity appears to have been 
procured in the mass of stipulations, each per- 
son, desirous of obtaining his own guarantees, 
requires that some special provision, on his 
account, be introduced in some particular to 
the subversion of the general design. Now, 
let but three or four parties exist in a na- 
tional assembly (and it is a blessing if there 
be no more) , and it is easy to see what sort of 
law it will be which is thus made ; a species of 
compound, mixed of the most irreconcilable 
opinions; a monstrous being, the violently 
united parts of which wage an intestine war, 
and which, therefore, after all the pain which 
its production has cost, is incapable of life. 
Nor can such laws be applied ; and after a 
disastrous trial, if they are not presently 
abolished by the party which next obtains the 



SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 131 

mastery in its turn, they fall into disuse, 01 
operate only by dint of exceptions, remaining 
as a weight and a clog upon the wheels of the 
political machine, which they continually 
threaten with dislocation. 

Whatever may have been said or done in 
our own day, there is nothing more deplorable 
for a people than a constitution-making assem- 
bly ; for it is a collection, of philosophers, or of 
men who fancy they are such, who do not quite 
understand themselves, and assuredly' do not 
understand each other. Then are the destinies 
of a nation, its form of government, its admi- 
nistration, its condition and its fortune, its wel- 
fare and its misery, its glory and its shame, 
consigned to the hazards and contradictions of 
systems and theories. 

Now, only name me a single philosopher who 
has uttered the truth, and the whole truth, 
about the principles, metaphysical, moral, and 
political, w 7 hich should serve as the basis of the 
social structure. Have they not in this most 
serious concern, to even a greater degree than 
in other matters, justified that remark of Cicero, 
that there is not an absurdity which has not found 
some philosopher to maintain it ? If you set 

K 2 



132 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 

several of them together, then, to work out a 
constitution, how can you hope they will agree ? 
They cannot agree except in one way, — that 
which we just now described, — by mutual con- 
cessions extorted from interest, not from con- 
viction ; and the force of things will oblige them 
to produce a ridiculous and impracticable 
result, repugnant to the good sense and con- 
science of the nation. 

But how then, it will be said, make a nation's 
constitution ? To this I answer, a nation's 
constitution is not made, it grows of itself; or 
j rather it is Divine Providence, who assumes the 
I office of making it, by the process of centuries, 
and writes it with His finger in a people's 
history. It was thus the English constitution 
was formed, and that is why it lasts. 

Or if, unhappily, after a revolution which 
has destroyed all a country's precedents, which 
has shaken and uprooted everything in the land, 
it becomes necessary to constitute it anew, we 
must then do as the ancients did, who had 
more sense than we have in this respect ; we 
must entrust the business to one man, endowed 
with an intelligence and an authority, adequate 
to this great feat, and impersonating, for the 



SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 133 

moment, the entire nation ; we must commit it 
to a Lycurgus, a Solon, or a Pythagoras ; for 
nothing needs more wisdom, reason, or courage 
than such an enterprise, and men of genius are 
not always equal to it, if circumstances do not 
assist them. At all events, to this we must 
come after revolutions, and their various expe- 
riments of parliamentary constitution. The 
seven or eight constitutions of the first republic 
ended in that of the empire which sprang full 
armed from the head of the new Jupiter ; and 
the Constituent Assembly of 1848, with its new 
birth so laboriously produced, but no more 
capable of life than the others, vanished in a 
single day, before the constitution of the new 
empire, which has nothing at its root but that 
of the old one. By this road have we come — 
if not to that liberty, of which they have said 
so much, but which they never allowed us to 
behold — to good sense and order, and to the 
peace of social life. 

Tn one word, then, I will say, to close what 
relates to political eloquence : if you have to 
speak on a matter in which there are admitted 
principles and authorised precedents, study it 
well in its connexion with both, that you may 



134 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 

have a foundation and examples. Then exa- 
mine it in all its actual elements, all its ramifi- 
cations and consequences. You will then easily 
construct your plan, which must be determined 
by the nature of things, and when you have 
well conceived and pondered it, you will speak 
easily, simply, and effectively. 

But if you must discuss the origin of society, 
the rights of men and nations, natural rights 
and social rights, and other questions of that 
kind, I have but one advice to give you : begin 
by reading on these questions all the systems 
of the philosophers and jurists, and after doing 
so, you will be so much in the dark, and will 
find such difficulty in arriving at a rational con- 
viction, that if you are sincere and honest, that 
is, unwilling to assert or maintain anything, 
except what you know or believe, you will 
decline speaking, and adopt the plan of keeping 
silence, in order not to add to darkness or 
increase the confusion. 

As to the bar, with the exception of the ad- 
justments of corn prices * and the harangues at 

* In France and some other countries, as in our own 
formerly, government interferes to settle the market con- 
ditions of certain staples, such as corn, flour, and bread" 



SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 135 

the opening of the courts, which are didactic 
or political, and, therefore, belong to another 
class of speaking, the addresses or pleadings 
whether by advocates, or from the floor of the 
court, are always business speeches ; and ac- 
cordingly the plan of them is easy, because it 
is pointed out by the facts, and by the develop- 
ment of the matter in litigation. Besides, the 
speaker, in this description of discourse, has 
his papers in his hand; and a man must be 
truly a blockhead, or else have a very bad 
cause to sustain, if he do not with ease, keep to 
the line of his subject, to which every thing 
conspires to recall and guide him. It is the 
easiest sort of speaking, because it demands the 
least invention, and because by comparing, 
however superficially, the facts of the case with 
the articles of the law, the reasons for and 
against occur of themselves, according to the 
side you wish to espouse, and the only thing 
in general to be done, is to enumerate them, 
with an explanation of each. 

And yet, in this, as in everything, good 
speeches are rare, because talent is rare in all 
things ; it is merely easier to be decently suc- 
cessful in a description of speaking, which com- 



136 POLITICAL AND FORENSIC 

prises a number of details, proceeds entirely 
upon facts, and is constantly supported by notes 
and corroborative documents. 

The preparation of the plan in addresses of 
this nature, costs, therefore, little trouble. The 
character of the subject bears nearly all the 
burden, and not much remains for the inven- 
tion or imagination. We should add that, 
having never pleaded, we cannot speak in any 
way from experience, and theory is hardly of 
any use in such matters. 

The great difficulty for the forensic orator is 
not to develope his matter, or to discover w^hat 
to say, but, on the contrary, to restrict it, to 
concentrate it, and to say nothing but what is 
necessary. Advocates are generally prolix and 
diffuse, and it must be said in their excuse, they 
are led into this, by the nature of their subject, 
and by the way in which they are compelled 
to treat it. Having constantly facts to state, 
documents to interpret, contradictory arguments 
to discuss, they easily become lost in details 
to which they are obliged to attach great im- 
portance ; and subtle discussion on the articles 
of the law, on facts, and on objections, occupies 
a very large space. It requires an exceedingly 



SPEAKING DISCUSSED. 137 

clear mind and no ordinary talent, to avoid 
being carried along by the current of this too 
easy eloquence, which degenerates so readily 
into mere fluency. Here, more than elsewhere, 
moderation and sobriety deserve praise, and the 
aim should be, not to say a great deal, but to 
avoid saying too much. 



138 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SPEAKING FROM THE PULPIT, AND TEACHING. 

We unite in our enquiry, so far as the pre- 
paring of a plan is concerned, both pulpit and 
professorial speaking. Although there is a 
striking difference between these two modes of 
speaking, on account of the situation of the ora- 
tors, and of the subjects which they handle, — a 
difference which we will indicate in passing, — 
yet a great analogy subsists between them, espe- 
cially in what regards the plan ; for they both 
aim at instructing the hearers, — that is, they 
aim at making the hearers understand and 
admit a truth, at impressing it on their convic- 
tion or persuasion, and at showing them the 
best means of applying it or putting it into 
practice. 

This resemblance, which may seem paradox- 
ical at first sight, is nevertheless founded on 
nature, and thus we shall perceive if these 



ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 139 

several kinds of discourse be thoroughly appre- 
ciated and considered, as to the end which 
they have in view, and not merely as to the 
oratorical form or words. 

What, in fact, is the preacher's grand aim ? 
Whither must he tend with all his might? 
What do the nature and the gravity of his 
ministry make incumbent upon him ? Clearly, 
the religious and moral instruction of those 
who listen to him, in order to induce them by a 
knowledge and conviction of the Divine Word, 
to observe it in their conduct, and to apply to 
their actions its precepts, counsels, and in- 
spirations. Wherefore, whether he expound 
a dogma, or morals, or aught that relates to 
worship and to discipline, he always takes as 
his starting point and basis, some truth doc- 
trinal or practical, which he has to explain, 
analyse, unfold, maintain, and elucidate. He 
must shed light by means of that truth, that it 
may enter the hearer's mind, and produce 
therein a clear view, a conviction, and that it 
may arouse or increase his faith ; and this faith, 
this conviction, this enlightenment must induce 
him to attach himself to it, to seize it through 
his volition, and to realise it in his life. 



140 ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 

However great may be the* ornament and 
pomp of the style, the brilliancy and variety of 
imagery, the movement and pathos of the 
phrases, the accent and the action: whether 
he excite powerfully the imagination, or move 
the sensibility, awake the passions, or cause 
the heartstrings to vibrate : all which is good, 
but only as accessory, and as a means to help 
the end, the elucidation of the truth. All these 
things, if unaccompanied by the principal one, 
lose their efficacy ; or, if they produce any 
effect, it will neither be deep nor lasting, be- 
cause there is no basis to the speech ; and from 
the orator having laboured so much on the ex- 
terior, he w T ill have nothing more to do. In 
one word, there is no idea in those words; 
only phrases, images, and movements. I 
know well that men may be carried captive 
and inflamed for the moment by this process ; 
but it is a blinding influence, that often leads 
to evil, or at least to an exaggeration that can- 
not be kept up. It is a passing warmth that 
soon cools in the midst of obstacles, and fades 
easily in the confusion it has caused through 
imprudence and precipitation. 

Teaching earnestly, or speaking only to the 



ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 141 

imagination, convincing the mind and per- 
suading the will, or carrying away the heart by 
the excitation of sensibility,- — these methods 
distinguish sacred orators as well as others. 
But to instruct and convince the listener, one 
must be instructed and convinced. To make 
truth pass into the minds of others, one must 
possess it in one's own ; and this can only be 
done both for oneself and for others, indepen- 
dently of supernatural faith, which is the gift 
of God, by an earnest meditation of the. holy 
Word, and the energetic and persevering 
labour of thought applied to the truth to be 
expounded, and the point of doctrine to be 
taught. The same exists in all kinds of scien- 
tific or literary teaching. 

It is evident in philosophy. He who teaches 
has always a doctrine to expound. Let a man 
treat of the faculties of the soul ; of the opera- 
tion of thought and its method ; of duties and 
rights ; of justice ; of what is good ; and even 
of what is beautiful : of the Supreme Being ; 
of beings and their laws ; of the finite and the 
infinite; of contingent and necessary matter; 
of the relative and the absolute : he has always 
before him an idea to expose, to develope and 



142 ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 

illustrate ; and the knowledge of this idea, that 
he tries to give his disciples must help to make 
them better as well as more enlightened, or 
else philosophy is no more worthy of her name. 
She would neither be the lover of wisdom nor 
its pursuit. 

If in the teaching of natural sciences the 
professor limits himself to practical experiences, 
to describe facts and phenomena, he will, no 
doubt, be able to amuse and interest his listen- 
ers, youth particularly ; but then he is only a 
painter, an experimenter, or an empiric. His 
is natural philosophy in sport, and his lectures 
are a kind of show, or recreative sittings. To 
be really a professor he must teach, and he can 
only teach through ideas ; that is, by explaining 
the laws that rule facts, and in connecting them 
as much as possible with the whole of the admi- 
rable system of the creation. He must lead his 
disciples up to the heights that command facts ; 
down in the depths from whence spring pheno- 
mena ; and there will only be science in his 
teaching, if he limit it to some heads of doc- 
trine, the connection of which constitutes 
precisely the science of which he is the master. 

He will then be able to follow them in their 



ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 143 

consequences, and to confirm their theory by 
applications to mechanical and industrial arts, 
or to any other use to which they may be ap- 
plied by man. 

The teaching of letters and of arts is the 
same : it must always be directed by the expo- 
sition of principles, rules, and methods. It is 
not sufficient to admire ecstatically great 
models, and become enthusiastic for master 
w T orks. It is something without doubt, when 
the enthusiasm is sincere, and the admiration 
is truly felt; but the teaching must be di- 
dactic ; he must himself learn while he teaches 
the secret of the work ; he must indicate the 
process, and direct the work. He must teach 
the pupils to acknowledge, to have a taste for 
what is beautiful, and to reproduce it; and to 
do this we must be able to say in what the 
beautiful consists in each art, and how we come 
to discern it in nature, to preserve or imagine it 
in our minds, while idealising it, and to transfer 
the ideal into reality, by the resources of art. 

Although here facts and examples have more 
influence, because feeling and imagination play 
the chief part in the work, yet ideas are also 
necessary, and especially in literature, poetry, 



144 ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 

and the arts of language. That which chiefly 
distinguishes artists and schools from each 
other is the predominance of the idea, or the 
predominance of the form. The most beautiful 
forms in the world, without ideas, remain super- 
ficial, cold, and dead. The idea alone gives life 
to any human production, as the Divine ideas 
vivify the productions of nature. For in all 
things the spirit quickeneth; but the letter, 
when alone, Mlleth. Therefore, he who teaches 
literature or art, ought to have a method, 
a certain science of his art, the principles of 
which he should expound, by rules and pro- 
cesses, applying them practically, and support- 
ing them with examples. 

Were we to pass in review all kinds of 
instruction one after another, we should find 
the same end and the same conditions as in pul- 
pit discourse or in religious teaching ; namely : 
the clear exposition of some truth for the 
instruction of the hearer, with a view to con- 
vince him and induce him to act according to 
his conviction. 

Let us see, then, at present in a general 
way, how we should set about preparing the 
plan of a discourse, and doing what we have 



ON PREACHING AND TEACHING. 145 

just said, whether as a preacher or as a pro- 
fessor. We shall here speak from experience 
and with simplicity, a circumstance which gives 
us some confidence, beeause we have been ac- 
customed to do so for nearly forty years in 
teaching philosophy, we still do so, and desire 
to do so while any strength and energy remain. 



146 



CHAPTER IX. 

DETERMINATION OF THE SUBJECT AND CON- 
CEPTION OF THE IDEA OF THE DISCOURSE, 

He who wishes to speak in public must, above 
all, see clearly on what he has to speak, and 
have a right conception of the idea. The pre- 
cise determination of the subject, and the idea 
of the discourse, — these are the two first 
stages of the preparation. 

It js not so easy as it seems to know upon 
what one is to speak ; many orators, at least, 
seem to be ignorant of it, or to forget it, in the 
course of their address ; for it is sometimes 
their case to speak of all things except those 
which would best relate to the occasion. This 
exact determination of the subject is still 
more needful in extemporisation ; for there 
many more chances of discursiveness exist. 
The address not being sustained by the me- 
mory or by notes, the mind is more exposed to 
the influences of the moment ; and nothing is 



THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 147 

required but the failure or inexactitude of a 
word, the suggestion of a new thought, a little 
inattention, to lure it from the subject, and 
throw it into some crossroad, which takes it 
far away. Add the necessity of continuing' 
when once a speech is begun, because to stop 
is embarrassing; to withdraw, a disgrace. 

Therefore, in order to lead and sustain the 
progress of a discourse, one must clearly know 
whence one starts, and whither one goes, and 
never lose sight of either the point of departure 
or the destination. But, to effect this, the road 
must be measured beforehand, and the principal 
distance marks must be placed: there is other- 
wise a risk of losing one's way, and then, either 
we fail to reach our destination, or attain it 
only after an infinity of turns and circuits, 
which have wearied the hearer as well as the 
speaker, without profit or pleasure to anybody. 

The determination of the subject ought not 
to fix merely the point upon which one has to 
speak, but further the radiation of this point 
and the circumference which it will embrace. 
The circle may be more or less extensive, and 
as all things are connected in the world of 
ideas, even more closely than in that of mate- 

l 2 



143 THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 

rial bodies, so you may render your discourse 
too discursive, and this often befalls those who 
extemporise; and thus the discourse rules the 
mind, not the mind the discourse. 

It is as a ship which falls away for want of a 
helm, and he who is within, unable to control 
her, abandons himself to the current of the 
stream, at the risk of wrecking himself upon 
the first breaker, not knowing where he shall 
touch the shore. 

It is but wise, then, not to begin a speech 
without having at least by a rapid general view, 
if there be no time to prepare a plan, decided 
the main line of the discourse, and sketched in 
the mind an outline of its most prominent 
features. In this precepts are not of great 
use ; good sense, tact, and a clear and lively 
intelligence are requisite to seize exactly the 
point in question and to hold to it ; and for this 
end nothing is better than to formularise it at 
once by some expression, some proposition, 
which may serve to reduce the subject to its 
simplest shape, and to determine its propor- 
tions. 

ques tion well stated is half solved. In 
ike manner a subject well fixed, admits of 



THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 149 

easier treatment, and singularly facilitates the 
discourse. As to the rest, the occasion, the 
circumstances, and the nature of the subject, do 
much in the same direction. There are cases 
in which the subject determines itself by the 
necessity of the situation and the force of 
things. The case is more embarrassing when the 
speaker is master of circumstances, as in teach- 
ing, where he may distribute his materials at his 
pleasure, and design each lesson's part. In any 
case, and however he sets to work, each dis- 
course must have its own unity, and constitute 
a whole, in order that the hearer may embrace 
in his understanding what has been said to him, 
may conceive it in his own fashion, and be able 
to reproduce it at need. 

But the general view of the subject, and 
the formula which gives it precision, are not 
enough ; the idea of it, the living idea, the 
parent idea, which is the source of the life in 
a discourse, and without which the words will 
be but a dead letter, must be obtained. 

What is this parent idea, and how to obtain 
it? 

In the physical world, whatever has life 
comes from a germ, and this germ, previously 



150 THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 

contained in another living existence, there 
takes life in itself, and on its own account, by the 
process of fecundation. Fecundated, it quits 
its focus ; pundum saliens, it radiates and tends 
to develope itself by reason of the primordial 
life which it bears within it, and of the nurture 
it receives ; then by gradual evolution, it ac- 
quires organic form, constituted existence, in- 
dividuality, and body. 

It is the same in the intellectual world, and 
in all the productions of our mind, made visible 
through language and discourse. There are in 
our understanding germs of mental existences, 
and when they are evoked by a mind which is 
of their own nature, they take life, become 
developed and organised, first in the depth 
of the understanding winch is their brooding- 
receptacle, and finally passing into the outer 
world by that speech which gives them a 
body, they become incarnate there, so to speak, 
and form living productions, instinct with more 
or less of life by reason of their fecundated 
germ of the understanding which begets them, 
and of the mind which vivifies them. 

In every discourse, if it have life, there is a 
parent idea or fertile germ, and all the parts of 



THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 151 

the discourse are like the principal organs and 
the members of an animated body. The pro- 
positions, expressions, and words, resemble 
those secondary organs which connect the 
principal organs, the nerves, muscles, vessels 
tissues, attaching them to one another, and 
rendering them copartners in life and death. 
Then amid this animate and organic mass there 
is the spirit of life, which is in the blood, and 
is everywhere diffused with the blood from the 
heart, life's centre, to the epidermis. So in 
eloquence, there is the spirit of the words, the 
soul of the orator, inspired by the subject, his 
intelligence illumined with mental light, w 7 hich 
circulates through the whole body of the dis- 
course, and pours therein brightness, heat, and 
life. A discourse without a parent idea, is a 
stream without a fountain, a plant without a 
root, a body without a soul; empty phrases, 
sounds which beat the air, or a tinkling cymbal. 
Nevertheless, let us not be misapprehended ; 
if we say that a discourse requires a parent 
idea, we do not mean that this idea must be a 
new one, never before conceived or developed 
by any one. Were this so, no more orators 
would be possible, since already from Solomon's 



152 THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 

day, there has been nothing new under the sun, 
and the cycle of ages continually brings back 
the same things under different forms. 

It is not likely, then, that there should be 
more new ideas in our day than in the time of 
the King of Israel ; but ideas, like all the 
existences of this world, are renewed in each 
age, and for each generation. They are re- 
produced under varied forms and with modifi- 
cations of circumstance : " Non nova sed nove," 
said Vincent of Lerins. The same things are 
differently manifested; aud thus they adopt 
themselves to the wants of men, which change 
with time and place. 

For this reason the orator may, and should 
say, ancient things, in substance ; but he will 
say them in another manner, corresponding 
with the dispositions of the men of his epoch, 
and he will add the originality of his individual 
conception and expression. 

For this purpose, in all the rigour of the word 
he should conceive his subject, in order to have 
the idea of it ; this idea must be born in him, and 
grow, and be organised in a living manner ; and 
as there is no conception without fecundation, 
this mental fecundation must come to him from 



THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 153 

without, either spontaneously, or, at least, in an 
invisible manner, as in the inspirations and il- 
luminations of genius, — or, what oftener hap- 
pens, by means of the attentive consideration 
of the subject and meditation upon the thoughts 
of others. 

In any case, whatever be the fashion of the 
understanding's fecundation, and from whatever 
quarter light comes to it, — and light is the life 
of the mind, — he must absolutely conceive the 
idea of what he shall say, if he is to say any- 
thing fraught with life, — that is, engendered, 
born in his mind, and bearing the character of it. 
His thoughts will then be proper to him (his 
own) by virtue of their production, and despite 
their resemblance to others, — as children belong 
to their mother, notwithstanding their likeness 
to all the members of the human race. But 
they all and each possess something new for 
the family and generation in which they are to 
live. It is all we would say when we require 
of him who has to speak in public, that he 
should have, at least, an idea to expound, 
sprung mentally, if we may so say, from his 
loins, and produced alive in the intellectual 
world by his words, as in the physical order a 



154 THE SUBJECT AND ITS POINT. 

child by its mother. This simply means, in the 
language of common sense, that the orator 
should have a clear conception of what he would 
say. 



155 



CHAPTER X. 

CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. INDIRECT 

METHOD. 

How ensure a good conception of your sub- 
ject ? There are two ways or methods ; the one 
direct, which is always the best when you can 
take it; the other indirect, longer and less 
certain, but more accessible to beginners, more 
within reach of ordinary minds, and serving to* 
form them. You may indeed use both ways ; 
either coming back the second way, when you 
have gone out by the first, or beginning with 
the easiest, in order to arrive at the most 
arduous. 

The main way, or that which by preeminence 
deserves the designation, consists in placing 
yourself immediately in relation with the object 
about which you have to speak, so as to con- 
sider it face to face, looking through it with the 
mind's eye, while you are yourself irradiated 
with the light which the object gives forth. 



156 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 

In this crossing of rays, and by means of 
their interpenetration, a conception, represent- 
ing that object which begets it, is produced in 
the understanding, and partakes of the nature 
of that in which it is formed, and which con- 
tains it. 

In this case a fecundation of the mind, or 
subject, is effected by the object, and the result is 
the idea of the object, begotten and brought 
into a living state in the understanding by its 
own force. This idea is always in the ratio of 
the two factors or causes which combine to call 
it forth, of their relation to each other, and of 
' the success with which the union is effected. 

If the mind be simple, unwarped, pure, 
greedy of knowledge, and eager after truth, — 
when it places itself before the object fully, 
considers it generally, at the same time that it 
opens itself unreservedly to its light with a wish 
to be penetrated by it, and to penetrate it, to 
become united to it with all its strength and 
capacity; and if, further, it have the energy 
and persistency to maintain itself in this atti- 
tude of attention without distraction, and col- 
lecting all its faculties, concentrating all its 
lights, it makes them converge upon this single 



CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 157 

point, and becomes wholly absorbed in the union 
which thus ensures intellectual fecundity, the 
conception then takes place after a normal and 
a plenary fashion. The very life of the object, 
or thing contemplated, passes with its light 
into the subject or mind contemplating, and 
from the life-endowed mental germ springs the 
idea, at first weak and dark, like whatever is 
newly-begotten, but growing afterwards by the 
labour of the mind and by nutrition. It will 
become gradually organised, full-grown, and 
complete, as soon as its constitution is strong 
enough to emerge from the understanding, it 
will seek the birth of words, in order to unfold 
to the world the treasures of truth and life which 
it contains within it. 

But if it be only examined obliquely, under 
an incidental or restricted aspect, the result will 
be a conception analogous to the connection 
which produces it, and consequently an idea of 
the object, possessing perhaps some truth and 
some life, but representing the object only in 
one phase, only in part, and thus leading to a 
narrow and inadequate knowledge. 

It is clear that as it is in the physical, so it is 
in the moral world. Knowledge is formed by 



158 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 

the same laws as existence, the knowledge of 
metaphysical like that of sensible things, al- 
though these differ essentially in their nature 
and in their limits. The laws by which life is 
transmitted, are those by which thought is 
transmitted, which is, after its own fashion, 
conceived and generated ; a fact arising from 
the application to the production of all living 
beings, of the eternal law of the Divine genera- 
tion, by which the Being of beings, the Prin- 
ciple of life, Who is life itself, engenders in 
Himself His image or His Word, by the know- 
ledge which He has eternally of Himself, and 
by the love of His own perfection which He 
contemplates. 

Thus with the human mind, which is made 
in the image of God, and which reproduces a 
likeness of it in all its operations ; the know- 
ledge of a human mind is also a sort of genera- 
tion. It has no knowledge of sensible things, 
except through the images which they produce 
in the understanding, and that such images 
should arise, it is requisite that the under- 
standing be penetrated by the impressions of 
objects, through the senses and their organs. 
Hence appearances, images, ideas, or, to speak 



CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 159 

more philosophically, conceptions of exterior 
things, which are not only the raw material of 
knowledge, but the principles more or less 
pregnant of the sciences of nature, according as 
they may have been formed in the mind. This 
accounts in part for the power of first impres- 
sions, the virtue of the first aspect, or of the 
primary meeting of the "subject" and object. 

Now we have intelligible and spiritual, as 
well as material and sensible existences around 
us. We live by our mind and by its inter- 
course with that of our fellow creatures in a 
moral world, which is realised and perpetuated 
by speech and in language, as physical existences 
are fixed in the soil, and from the soil developed. 
The language spoken by a human community, 
and constituting the depository, the magazine 
of the thoughts, ideas, and knowledge of that 
community, forms a true world of minds, a 
sphere of intellectual existences, having its own 
life, light, and laws. 

Now it is with these subtle and, and as it 
were, ethereal existences, which are condensed 
in words, like vapour in clouds, — it is with these 
metaphysical realities that our mind must 
come into contact, in order by them to be 



160 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 

fecundated, without other medium than the 
signs which express them, and in order to 
conceive the ideas which science has to develope 
by analysis, and which the speaker will unfold 
in his discourse, so as to bring home their 
truth to those who are ignorant of it. Any- 
body must feel how difficult it is to hold 
commune by the sight of the mind with things 
so delicate, so evanescent, things which cannot 
be seized except by their nebulous and ever 
shifting dress of language ; and how much more 
difficult it is to persist long in this contempla- 
tion, and how soon the intelligence gets fatigued 
of pursuing objects so scarcely tangible, objects 
escaping its grasp on all sides. In truth it is 
only a very rare and choice class of minds which 
know how to look directly, fixedly, and perse- 
veringly at objects of pure intelligibility. For 
the same reason they have greater fecundity, 
because entering into a close union with the ob- 
jects of their thought, and becoming thoroughly 
penetrated by them, they take in the very 
nature and vitality of things, with the light 
which they emit. 

These are the minds, moreover, that con- 
ceive ideas and think for the rest of mankind, 



CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 161 

whose torches and guides they are in the intel- 
lectual world ; and as their words, the vehicle 
of their conceptions and thoughts, are employed 
during instruction in reproducing, that is, in 
engendering within the minds of their fellow- 
creatures the ideas which the light of the things 
themselves has produced in their own, they are 
called men of genius, that is, generators by 
intelligence, or transmitters by means of lan- 
guage, of the light and life of the mind. 

This consideration brings us to the second 
way or method by which feebler intellects, or 
such as have talent without having genius, may 
also succeed in conceiving the idea of the sub- 
ject upon which they are about to speak. 



M 



162 



CHAPTER XI. 

CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT.— INDIRECT 
METHOD. 

Those who have to treat a subject which has 
not been treated before, are obliged to draw 
from a consideration of the subject, and from 
their own resources, all they have to say. 
Then, according to their genius and their pe- 
netration, and in proportion to the manner in 
which they put themselves in presence of the 
things, will their discourse evince more or less 
truth, exactitude, and depth. They are sure to 
be original, since they are the first to treat the 
subject, and, uninfluenced by any prejudice or 
bias, the natural impression of the object upon 
their soul, produces clear and profound ideas, 
which remain in the kingdom of science or of 
art as common property, and a sort of patrimony 
for those w T ho come later. Afterwards, when 



CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 163 

the way is opened, and many have trodden it, 
leaving their traces behind them, when a sub- 
ject has been discussed at various times and 
among several circles, it is hard to be original, 
in the strict sense, upon that topic ; that is, to 
have new thoughts — thoughts not expressed 
before. But it is both possible and incumbent 
to have that other species of originality, which 
consists in putting forth no ideas except such 
as we have made our own, and which are thus 
quickened with the life of our own mind. This 
is called taking possession in the finders name; 
and Moliere, when he imitated Plautus and 
Terence ; La Fontaine, when he borrowed from 
iEsop and Phsedrus, were not ashamed of the 
practice. This condition is indispensable, if 
life is to be imparted to the discourse ; and it 
is this which distinguishes the orator, who 
draws on his own interior resources even when 
he borrows, from the actor who impersonates, 
or the reader who recites the productions of 
another. 

In such a case the problem stands therefore 
thus: — When you have to speak on a subject 
already treated by several authors, you must care- 
fully cull their justest and most striking thoughts, 

M 2 



164 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 

analyse and sift these with critical discernment 
and penetration, then fuse them in your own 
alembic by a powerful synthetic operation, 
which, rejecting whatever is heterogeneous, 
collects and kneads whatever is homogeneous 
or amalgamable, and fashions forth a complex 
idea that shall assume consistency, unity, and 
colour in the understanding, by the very heat 
of the mind's labour. 

If we may compare things spiritual with 
things material, — and we always may, since 
they are governed by the same laws, and hence 
their analogy, — we would say that, in the 
formation of an idea by this method, some- 
thing occurs similar to what is observed in the 
productions of the ceramic or modeller's art, 
composed of various elements, earths, salts, 
metals, alkalies, acids, and the rest, which, 
when suitably separated, sifted, purified, are 
first united into one compound, then kneaded, 
shaped, moulded, or turned, and finally sub- 
jected to the action of the fire which combines 
them in unity, and gives to the whole solidity 
and splendour. 

Thus, the orator w T ho speaks after many 
others, and must treat the same topic, ought 



CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 165 

first to endeavour to make himself acquainted 
with all that has been written on the subject, 
in order to extract from the mass the thoughts 
which best serve his end ; he ought then to 
collect and fuse within his own thought the 
lights emitted by other minds, gather and con- 
verge upon a single point the rays of those 
various luminaries. 

He cannot shirk this labour, if he would 
treat his subject with fulness and profundity ; 
in a word, if he is in earnest with his business, 
which is to seek truth, and to make it known. 
Like every true artist, he has an intuition of 
the ideal, and to that ideal he is impelled by 
the divine instinct of his intelligence to lift his 
conceptions and his thoughts, in order to pro- 
duce, first in himself and then upon others, by 
speaking or by whatever is his vehicle of ex- 
pression, something which shall for ever tend 
towards it, without ever attaining it. For 
ideas, properly so called, being the very con- 
ceptions of the Supreme Mind, the eternal 
archetypes after which all created things have 
been modelled with all their powers, the human 
mind, made after the image of the Creator, 
yet always finite, whatever its force or its light, 



166 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 

can catch but glimpses of them here below, and 
will always be incapable of conceiving and of 
reproducing them in their immensity and in- 
finitude. 

However, care must be taken here not to 
allow oneself to be carried away by too soaring 
a train of considerations, or into too vast a 
field; all things are linked together and in 
the higher world, the realm of sovereign unity, 
and universality, this is more especially the 
case. A philosopher, meditating and writing, 
may give wings to his contemplation, and his 
flight will never be too lofty nor too vigorous, 
provided his intelligence be illumined with the 
true light, and guided in the right path ; but 
the speaker generally stands before an audience 
who are not on his own level, and whom he 
must take at theirs. Again, he speaks with a 
view to some immediate effect, some definite 
end. His topic is restricted by these conditions, 
and his manner of treating it must be subor- 
dinated to them, his discourse adapted to them. 
It is no business of his to say all that might be 
said, but merely what is necessary or useful in 
the actual case, in order to enlighten and 
persuade his hearers. He must, therefore, cir- 



CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 167 

cumscribe his matter within the limits of his 
purpose ; and his discourse must have just that 
extent, that elevation, and discretion, which 
the special circumstances demand. 

It is with this aim that the orator ought to 
prepare his materials, and lay in, as it were, 
the provisions for his discourse. 

First, as we have said, he must collect the 
materials for his discourse. Then he will do 
what the bee does, which rifles the flowers, — 
and by an admirable instinct which never mis- 
leads it, it extracts from the cup of the flower 
only what serves to form the wax and the 
honey, the aromatic and the oleaginous parti- 
cles. But, be it well observed, the bee first 
nourishes itself with these extracts, digests them, 
transmutes them, and turns them into wax and 
honey solely by an operation of absorption 
and assimilation. 

Just so should the speaker do. Before him 
lie the fields of science and of literature, rich 
in each description of flower and fruit, — every 
hue, every flavour. In these fields he will seek 
his booty, but with discernment ; and choosing 
only what suits his work, he will extract from 
it, by thoughtful reading and by the process of 



168 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 

mental tasting (his thoughts all absorbed in his 
topic, and darting at once upon whatever re- 
lates to it), everything which can minister nutri- 
ment to his intelligence, or fill it, or even per- 
fume it ; in a word, the substantial or aromatic 
elements of his honey, or idea, but ever so as 
to take in and to digest, like the bee, in order 
that there may be a real transformation and 
appropriation, and consequently a production 
fraught with life. 

The way in which he should set to work, 
or at least the way in which we have ourselves 
proceeded under similar circumstances, and 
with good results, is this. 

[We hope we shall be forgiven for these 
details of the interior, these private manage- 
ments of an orator : we think them more useful 
to show how to contrive than the didactics of 
teaching would be ; they are the contrivances 
of the craft, secrets of the workshop. Besides, 
we are not writing for adepts, but for novices ; 
and these will be better helped by practical 
advice, and by the results of positive ex- 
perience, than by general rules or by specu- 
lations.] 

Above all, then, you must decide with the 



CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 169 

utmost clearness what it is you are going to 
speak upon. Many orators are too vague in 
this ; and it is an original vice which makes 
itself felt in their whole labour, and, later, in 
their audience. Nothing is worse than vague- 
ness in a discourse ; it produces obscurity, dif- 
fuseness, rigmarole, and wearisomeness. The 
hearer does not cling to a speaker who talks 
without knowing what he would say, and who, 
undertaking to guide him, seems to be ignorant 
whither he is going. 

The topic once well settled, the point to be 
treated, once well defined, you know where to 
go for help. You ask for the most approved 
writers on that point ; you get together their 
works, and begin to read them with attention, 
pausing, above all, upon the chapters and pas- 
sages which specially concern the matter in 
question. 

Always read pen or pencil in hand. Mark 
the parts which most strike you, those in 
which you perceive the germ of an idea or of 
anything new to you; then, when you have 
finished your reading, make a note, but let it 
be a substantial note, not a mere transcrip- 
tion or extract — a note embodying the very 



170 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 

thought which you have apprehended, and 
which you have already made your own by 
digestion and assimilation. 

Above all, let these notes be short and lucid ; 
put them down one under the other, so that 
you may afterwards be able to run over them 
at a single view. 

Mistrust long readings from which you carry 
nothing away. Our mind is naturally so lazy, 
the labour of thought is so irksome to it, that 
it gladly yields to the pleasure of reading other 
people's thoughts, in order to avoid the trouble 
of forming any itself; and then time passes in 
endless readings, the pretext of which is some 
hunt after materials, and which comes to no- 
thing. The mind ruins its own sap, and gets 
burdened with trash : it is as though overladen 
with undigested food, which gives it neither 
force nor light. 

Quit not a book until you have wrested from 
it whatever relates the most closely to your 
subject. Not till then go on to another, and 
if I may so express myself, get the cream off 
in the same manner. 

Repeat this labour with several books, until 
you find the same ideas are presented to the 



CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 171 

mind, and there is nothing more to gain ; or 
until you feel your understanding to be suffi- 
ciently furnished, and that your mind now 
requires to digest the nutriment which it has 
taken. 

Rest awhile, in order to let the intellectual 
digestion operate. Then, when these various 
aliments begin to be transformed, and inter- 
penetrated, comes the labour of the desk, which 
will extract from the mass of nourishment its 
very juices, distribute them everywhere, and 
will contribute to form, from diversity of pro- 
ducts, unity of life. 

It is with the mind as with the body ; after 
nourishment and repose, it requires to act and 
to transmit. When it has repaired its strength, 
it must exert it ; when it has received, it must 
give ; after having concentrated itself, it needs 
dilation ; it must yield back what it has ab- 
sorbed ; fulness unrelieved is as painful to it as 
inanition. These are the two vital movements, 
— attraction and expansion. 

The moment this fulness is felt, the moment 
of acting or thinking for yourself has arrived. 

You take up your notes and you carefully 
re-read them face to face with the topic to be 



172 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 

treated. You blot out such as diverge from 
it too much, or are not sufficiently substantial, 
and by this elimination you gradually concen- 
trate and compress the thoughts which have the 
greatest reciprocal bearing. You work these a 
longer or a shorter time in your understanding, 
as in a crucible, by the inner fire of reflection, 
and, in nine cases out of ten, they end by 
amalgamating and fusing into one another, 
until they form a homogeneous mass, which is 
reduced, like the metallic particles in incandes- 
cence, by the persistent hammering of thought, 
into a dense and solid oneness. 

As soon as you become conscious of this 
unity, you obtain a glimpse of the essential 
idea of the composition, and in that essential 
idea, the leading ideas which will distribute 
your topic, and which already appear like the 
first organic lineaments of the discourse. 

In the case supposed, the idea forms itself 
synthetically, or by a sort of intellectual coa- 
gulation, which is fraught with life, because 
there is really a crossing or interpenetration of 
various thoughts in one single mind, which has 
assimilated them to one another only by first 
assimilating them to itself. They take life in 



CONCEPTION OF THE . SUBJECT. 173 

its life which unifies them, and although the 
idea be thus compounded of a multiplicity of 
elements, nevertheless as these elements have 
been transformed into that one mind's own 
thought, they become harmonised therein, and 
constitute a new production endowed by the 
understanding in which it is called forth, with 
something individualising and original. 

However, a different result sometimes occurs, 
and this happens particularly in the most stirring 
and fertile intellects. The perusal of other 
men's thoughts, and the meditation thus excited, 
becomes for them not the efficient cause, but 
the occasion, of the requisite idea, which springs 
into birth by a sudden illumination, in the 
midst of their mental labour over other people's 
ideas, as the spark darts from the flint when 
stricken by steel. 

It is a mixed method between the direct, 
which is that of nature, and the indirect, which 
we have been describing. It partakes of the 
former, because there is in it a kind of genera- 
tion of the idea which is instantaneously effected ; 
but it is a generation less instinct with life, and, 
as it w r ere, at second hand ; for it is not formed 
in the mi» by the action of the thing itself, 



174 CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 

but by its image or reflection in a human ex- 
pression. It partakes of the second method, 
because the birth of the idea is brought about 
by reading and meditation. 

The idea which is its offspring, though infe- 
rior to that engendered by the object itself, is 
more natural, and, therefore, more living than 
that produced by synthesis ; simpler, more one, 
more original; it is more racy of the mind, 
which has conceived it at one effort, and from 
which it springs full of life, as Minerva in the 
fable sprang full armed from the head of Jupiter, 
cleft by Vulcan's hatchet. Thus it is with 
the orator's understanding, which is suddenly 
opened by a thought that strikes it, and from 
which arises completely organised the idea of 
his topic to become the Minerva or wisdom of 
his discourse. In this case the plan of his com- 
position arranges itself spontaneously. The 
parent idea takes the place of sovereignty at 
once, by right of birth, and all the others 
group themselves around her, and to her subor- 
dinate themselves, in order to co-operate in 
better displaying her and doing her honour, 
as bees surround the queen bee to work under 
her direction at the common task, or as, in the 



CONCEPTION OF THE SUBJECT. 175 

revolutions and the emergencies which end 
them, nations instinctively rally about the man 
raised up by the Almighty to re-establish order, 
equity, and peace. 



176 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE FORMATION AND THE ARRANGEMENT 
OF IDEAS. 

The idea is formed either through the fecun- 
dation of the understanding by the object 
which there engenders its image and deposits 
its life, or by the bringing together of various 
elements transformed and made one by the ab- 
sorbing and reflecting operations of the mind ; 
or else by a mixed process which partakes of 
both these, and which we just now described. 

In all three cases, however, at the first 
moment of conception, there is as yet only a 
shapeless and vague product which floats, so to 
say, upon the waters of the understanding, and 
over which broods the spirit of life which has 
indeed animated it, but which has still to 
develope and to organise it, to establish it in a 



FORMATION OF IDEAS. 177 

definite state of existence, and to give it an 
individuality * by means of words. 

It is the germ fecundated in the parent soil, 
but which cannot vet spring forth without 
danger, for want of the necessary organisation 
to live and take its place in the world to which 
it is destined to belong. Therefore, a period of 
incubation and organogenesis is indispensable to 
it under pain of its abortion, and the loss of 
its life. 

This is precisely the speaker's case ; he has 
conceived his idea, and he bears it in his un- 
derstanding. He must not commit it to the 
day until it is able to appear with the con- 
ditions of vitality, that is to say, before it is 
organised in all its parts, in order that it 
may properly perform its functions in the 
world which it is to enter ; — neglect this, and 
you will have an abortive discourse, words 
without life. 

;; :i A local habitation and a name." There is through- 
out the whole of these passages a striking analogy between 
the thoughts of Shakspeare. as they are hinted in his 
brief picture of the poet, and those which M. Bautain, 
applying them to the orator, more philosophically analyses 
and more fully (level opes. 

N 



178 FORMATION OF IDEAS. 

Sometimes the idea thus conceived, is de- 
veloped and formed rapidly, and then the plan 
of the discourse arranges itself on a sudden, 
and you transmit it to paper warm with the 
fervour of the conception which has just taken 
place, as the metal in a state of fusion is poured 
into the mould, and fills at a single turn all its 
lineaments. It is the case most favourable to 
eloquence, — that is, if the idea has been well 
conceived, and if it be fraught with light. 

But in general, one must not be in a hurry 
to form one's plan. In nature, life always 
needs a definite time for self-organisation, — 
and it is only ephemeral beings which are 
quickly formed, for they as quickly pass away. 
Everything destined to be durable is of slow T 
growth, and both the solidity and the strength 
of existing things bear a direct ratio to the 
length of their increase and the matureness 
of their production. 

When, therefore, you have conceived an 
idea, unless it be perfectly clear to you at the 
first glance, be in no haste to throw it into 
shape. Carry it for a time in your mind, and 
it will of itself tend towards development and 
completion. By means of the spiritual medi- 



FORMATION OF IDEAS* 179 

tation, it will, when sufficiently mature to be 
trusted to the light of day, spontaneously 
strive to break from confinement, and to issue 
forth to view; — then comes the moment for 
writing. 

The organic generation of ideas is as impos- 
sible to explain fully as that of bodies. Nature's 
work is as mysterious in the one respect as in 
the other ; only there being a part for freewill 
and conscience to play in the intellectual 
sphere, we see a little more clearly in this than 
in the other, and co-operate a little more di- 
rectly. 

The understanding, in fact, is a spiritual soil 
which has feeling, consciousness, and, up to a 
certain point, a knowledge of whatever is 
taking place in it. We cannot conceive an 
idea without being conscious of it ; for the very 
property of a mental conception is the for- 
mation within us of a new knowledge ; and 
thus we are not left, in this respect, as in the 
physical order, to the operation of the blind 
force of nature. The mother of the Maccabees 
said to her children — " I know not how you 
were formed, . . . nor how the life you have re- 

N 2 



180 FORMATION OF IDEAS. 

ceived was created ;" now, the understanding, 
which is the mother of the ideas engendered 
by it and living in it, has the privilege not 
only of feeling but of seeing their formation ; 
otherwise it would not be understanding. It 
assists at the development of its ideas, and co- 
operates therein, actively and intelligently, by 
the functions of thought and reflection, by 
meditation and mental toil. Such is the dif- 
ference between the physical and moral nature, 
between the life of the body and that of the 
mind, between the action of animaie matter 
and that of intelligence. 

The thoughts apply themselves to a frequent 
consideration of the idea conceived ; they turn 
and re-turn it in every direction, look at it in 
all its aspects, place it in all manner of relations ; 
they penetrate it with their light, scrutinise 
its foundation, and examine its principal parts 
in succession ; these begin to come out, to 
separate themselves from each other, to assume 
sharp outlines, just as the bud in the first 
rudimentary traces of the flower are discernible ; 
then the other organic lines, appearing one 
after the other, instinct with life, or like the 



FORMATION OF IDEAS. 181 

confused, first animate form, which little by 
little, declares itself in all the finish of its pro- 
portions. In like manner, the idea, in the 
successive stages of its formation, shows itself 
each day in fuller development to the mind 
which bears it, and which acquires the assur- 
ance of its progress by persevering medita- 
tion. 

There are frequently good ideas which 
perish in a man's understanding, whether 
for want of nourishment, or from the debility 
of the mind which, through levity, indolence, 
or giddiness, fails to devote a sufficient amount 
of reflection to what it has conceived. It 
is even observable that those w 7 ho conceive 
with the greatest quickness and facility, bring 
forth, generally, both in thoughts and in lan- 
guage, the weakest and the least durable produc- 
tions ; whether it be that they do not take time 
enough to mature what they have conceived, — 
hurried into precocious display by the vivacity 
of their feelings and imagination, — or on account 
of the impressionability and activity of their 
minds, which, ever yielding to fresh emotions, 
exhausting themselves in too rapid an alternation 



182 FORMATION OF IDEAS. 

of revulsions, have not the strength for patient 
meditation, and allow the half-formed idea or 
the crude thought, born without life, to escape 
from the understanding. Much, then, is in 
our own power towards the ripening and per- 
fecting of our ideas. 

Nevertheless, we must acknowledge and 
with humility confess, — even while conceding 
their full share in the result to reason and our 
own voluntary efforts, — a share as undeni- 
able in this case, and perhaps more undeni- 
able, than in any other, — that there is a great 
deal which is not within our power in the 
whole of this operation, and that a man's own 
proper part, or merit, in the matter, is of 
very slight account, compared to the immense 
and gratuitous gifts on which he must rely. 
Who can give to genius, or even to talent, that 
marvellous understanding by which things are 
promptly and lucidly conceived, — that fertile 
and sensitive mirror of ideas which responds to 
the slightest objective impression, and so as- 
tonishingly reproduces all its types ? 

Who can give them that powerful intelligence, 
whose piercing glance seizes every relation, 



FORMATION OF IDEAS. 183 

discerns every shade, traverses the whole extent 
of ideas ? That glowing imagination which 
invests each conception with brilliant colouring, 
— that unfailing and tenacious memory which 
preserves unimpaired all the features of it, and 
reproduces them at will, either separately or 
together, to assist the labour of thought and 
meditation ? 

Who can give them that vigorous attention, 
that strong grasp of the mind, which seizes 
with energy and holds with perseverance before 
the eye of intelligence, the object to be consi- 
dered and sounded; who gives them that 
patience of observation, which is itself a species 
of genius, especially in the study of Nature ? 

All these rich endowments may, indeed, be 
developed by exercise and perfected by art ; 
but neither exercise nor art can give them. 
And since in the order of intelligence, and of 
science, as in the physical w T orld, we see 
nothing without the light w 7 hich illumines 
objects, whence do these select minds get that 
intellectual and immaterial light, which shines 
upon them more abundantly than on others, 
and enables them to discern in things and in the 



184 FORMATION OF IDEAS. 

ideas of things what others see not ? So that, 
according to the magnificent expression of the 
Royal Prophet they see the light in the light. 
Whence the lofty aspirations, the sudden 
flashings of genius, producing great and new 
ideas, so deeply and so mightily conceived, 
that they become by their radiation so many 
centres of light, so many torches of the human 
race ? How is it that, in the presence of nature 
or of society, they experience such emotions and 
such impressions, that they see and understand 
what to others is all darkness and void ? 

We might as well ask why one soil is more 
fruitful than another, why the sun in one 
climate is brighter, and his light more pure 
than in another. The Almighty dispenses His 
treasures and His favours as He deems best, 
and this in the moral, no less than in the 
physical world. In this dispensation to nations 
or to individuals, He always has in view the 
manifestation of His truth, His power, and 
His mercy ; and wherever He kindles a larger 
share than usual of light and fire, wherever the 
magnitude of His gifts is specially remarkable, 
there has He chosen organs of His will, wit- 



FORMATION OF IDEAS. 185 

nesses of His truth, heralds of His science, re- 
presentatives of His glory, and benefactors of 
mankind. 

In this is the true secret of those wonders of 
power, of virtue, and of genius, which appear 
from time to time on earth. It is the Almighty 
who would make Himself known by His 
envoys, or would act by His instruments ; and 
the real glory and happiness of both, where 
they are intelligent and free beings, are to co- 
operate with their whole strength and their 
whole will towards the great coming of God's 
kingdom upon earth, and towards the fullest 
possible realisation of His eternal ideas. 

In this respect, the same thing is true of the 
works of man's mind in science, which is true 
of the acts of his will in the practice of bene- 
ficence. He cannot do a good action without 
wishing it, and he cannot wish it without the 
exercise of his liberty ; but the inspiration of 
good, which induces him to choose it, and gives 
him the strength to accomplish it, comes not 
from himself. It is a gratuitous gift from the 
sole Giver of all that is good. It is for this 
reason we are told that, of ourselves, we cannot 



186 FORMATION OF IDEAS. 

form a good resolution, nor think a good 
thought, nor perform a good action ; and never- 
theless, we will, we choose, we act freely, — for 
we are responsible. In like manner, we can 
effect nothing of ourselves in the conception 
and expression of our ideas. We stand in 
need of the life of our understanding being 
perpetually renewed ; of the life or the impres- 
sion of objects, penetrating it more or less 
deeply ; of the light which fertilises, engenders, 
fosters; in fine, of the life which surrounds 
minds and spirits, as well as bodies, — that 
moral atmosphere which calls forth, feeds, and 
developes whatever has motion therein. And 
amid all this, and along with it, is required the 
energetic co-operation of the spirit or mind itself, 
which feels, conceives, and thinks, and without 
which nothing human can be accomplished. 

Thus, then, in the order of speculation for 
our mental productions, as in the moral order, 
for the accomplishment of our actions, while 
maintaining our freewill, while exercising to 
the full, the activity of our intelligence, which 
have their own rights, lot, and part, let us 
reckon above all upon Him who has in Him 



FORMATION OF IDEAS. 187 

life itself, who enlightens minds and fertilises 
or enriches them, just as He impresses and 
guides hearts, and Whose virtue, in imparting 
itself to men, becomes the source of perfect 
gifts, of luminous conceptions, of great ideas, 
as well as of good inspirations, holy resolves, 
and virtuous actions. 



188 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ARRANGEMENT OF THE PLAN. 

Everything in nature comes in its own time 
and at the predetermined instant. The fruit, 
drops its seed when it is ripe and fit for 
reproduction, and the child is born when the 
hour has arrived, and when the new being is 
sufficiently organised to live. 

It is thus with the mental production which 
the orator bears in his understanding. There 
is a moment when the idea tends to issue forth 
from its obscure retreat, in order to alight in 
the world of day, appear in the face of the sun, 
and there unfold itself. 

Only this much difference there is, that the 
latter production, being intellectual, depends to 
a certain degree upon the freedom of the 
mind ; that, consequently, the moment of birth 
is not, in it, predestinary or necessary, as in 



ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 189 

the physical order, and thus the will of the 
author may hasten or delay it often to the injury 
of the production and of its development. Pre- 
mature expression (that is, when you seek to 
reduce to plan an idea which is not ripe, and 
the organisation of which is still vague) may 
lead to a failure, or at least to a disappointing 
off-shoot, incapable of life, or capable of only a 
sickly life — a fate which often befals youthful 
authors too eager to produce. 

But, on the other side, too much delay in the 
composition of the plan, when the idea is ready 
and demands expression, is equally prejudicial 
to the work, which may wither, perish, and be 
even stifled in the understanding, for want of 
that air and light which have become indispens- 
able to its life, and which it can derive only 
from being set in the open day. 

There are men who experience the greatest 
difficulty imaginable in bringing forth their 
thoughts, either from a deficiency of the need- 
ful vigour to put them forward and invest them 
with a suitable form, or from a natural indo- 
lence which is incapable of continued efforts ; 
like those plants which will never pierce the 
soil by their own unaided energy, and for 



190 ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 

which the spade must be used at the risk of 
destroying their tender shoots. This sluggish- 
ness, or rather incapability of producing when 
the time is come, is a sign of mental feebleness, 
of a species of impotency. It invariably be- 
tokens some signal defect in the intellectual 
constitution, and those who are afflicted with it 
will write little, will write that little with 
difficulty, and will never be able to speak ex- 
temporaneously in public ; they will never be 
orators. 

Nevertheless, even in him who is capable of 
becoming one, there is sometimes a certain 
inertness and laziness. We have naturally a 
horror of labour, and of all kinds the labour of 
thought is the hardest and the most trouble- 
some ; so that frequently, for no other reason 
than to avoid the pain which must be under- 
gone, a person long keeps in his own head an 
idea, already perfectly ripe and requiring only 
to be put forth. He cannot bring himself to 
take up the pen and put his plan into shape ; he 
procrastinates, day after day, under the futile 
pretext of not having read enough, not having 
reflected enough, and that the moment is not 
yet come, and that the work will gain by more 



ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 191 

prolonged studies. Then, by this unseasonable 
delay, the fruit languishes in the understanding 
from want or nourishment; falls by degrees 
into atrophy, loses its vital force, and dies 
before it is yet born. Many an excellent idea 
thus perishes in the germ, or is stifled in its 
development by the laziness or the debility of 
the minds which have conceived them, and 
which have been impotent to give them forth. 

The Almighty's gift is lost through man's 
fault. This happens to men otherwise distin- 
guished and gifted with rare qualities, but who 
dread the responsibilities of duty and the pres- 
sure of the circumstances in which they may 
become involved. Under pretext of preserving 
their freedom, but really in order to indulge 
their indolence, they shun the necessity of 
labour, with its demands and its fatigues, and 
thus deprive themselves of the most active 
stimulus of intellectual life. Given up to 
themselves, and fearing every external influence 
as a bondage, they pass their lives in conceiving 
without ever producing, — in reading without 
contributing anything of their own, — in re- 
flecting, or rather in ruminating, without ever 
either writing or speaking publicly. It would 



192 ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 

have been happy for such men to have been 
obliged to work for a living ; for, in the spur of 
want their mind would have found a spring 
which it has missed, and the necessity of sub- 
sisting by labour, or positive hunger, would 
have effected in them what the love of truth or 
of glory w r as not able to accomplish. 

The very best thing for him who has received 
the gift of eloquence, and who could make an 
orator, is, therefore, that he should be compelled 
to become one. The labour of eloquence, and 
the labour of thinking which it presupposes, 
cost so much trouble and are so difficult, that 
save some choice characters, impelled by their 
genius or by ambition, nothing short of some 
downright necessity, physical or moral, is re- 
quisite to drive men to undertake them. 

But if a man is a professor, and must deliver 
his lecture or instructions on some fixed day, 
and at an appointed hour, — or a clergyman, 
and is obliged to mount the pulpit at such or 
such a moment; or a barrister, who has to 
address the court at the time fixed by the 
judges ; or member of some council or delibera- 
tive assembly, under an engagement to speak 
in a certain business, then, indeed, a man must 



ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 193 

be ready, on pain of failing in his duty, or of 
compromising his position, his reputation. On 
such occasions, an effort is made, laziness is 
shaken off, and a man strives in earnest either 
to fathom the question (and this is never done 
so well as when it is necessary to write or to 
speak thereon), or else to form a clearer notion of 
it, or, in short, to prepare the best exposition of 
it, with a view to producing conviction and 
persuasion. In this respect, we may say in the 
words of the Gospel, " Blessed are the poor" 
Penury or want is the keenest spur of the 
mind and of the will. You are forced to bestir 
yourself and to draw on your inventive re- 
sources, and in youth especially, which is the 
most favourable time for securing instruction 
and acquirements, it is a great happiness to be 
plucked away by necessity from the enticement 
of pleasure, the dissipations of the world, the inac- 
tivity of supineness. There needs nothing short 
of this kind of compulsion, and of the fear which 
it inspires, to recal to reflection, meditation, and 
the persevering exercise of thought, a soul drawn 
outward by all the senses, athirst for enjoyment, 
and carried away by the superabundance of 
life (which at that age is overflowing) into the 

o 



194 ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 

external world, there to seek for that nourish- 
ment and happiness which it will not there find. 
Our own entire youth was passed in that violent 
state, that unceasing conflict between the in- 
stinct of nature and the duty of toil. By this 
we know what it costs to achieve the triumph, 
and what most tends to ensure it. 

How ought your plan to be arranged ? 

In order to produce or arrange it well, you 
must take your pen in hand. Writing is a 
whetstone, or flattening engine, which wonder- 
fully stretches ideas, and brings out all their 
malleableness and ductility. 

On some unforeseen occasion you may, with- 
out doubt, after a few moments of reflection, 
array suddenly the plan of your discourse, and 
speak appropriately and eloquently. This pre- 
supposes, in other respects, that you are well 
versed in your subject, and that you have in your 
understanding chains of thought formed by pre- 
vious meditations ; for it is impossible to ex- 
temporise the thoughts, at least during the whole 
of a discourse. 

But if you have time for preparation, never 
undertake to speak without having put on paper 
the sketch of what you have to say, the links 



ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 195 

of your ideas ; and this for two reasons : — the 
first and weightiest is, that you thus possess 
your subject better, and consequently speak 
more closely and with less risk of digressions. 
The second is, that when you write down a 
thought you analyse it. The division of the 
subject becomes clear, becomes determinate, 
and a crowd of things which were not before 
perceived present themselves under the pen. 

Speaking is thinking aloud, but it is more ; 
it is thinking with method and more distinctly, 
so that in embodying your idea you not only make 
others understand it, but you understand it 
better yourself while spreading it out before 
your own eyes and unfolding it by words. 

Writing adds more still to speech, giving it 
more precision, more fixity, more strictness, and 
by being forced more closely to examine what 
you wish to write down you extract hidden 
relations, you reach greater depths, wherein 
may be disclosed rich veins or abundant lodes. 

Experience teaches us that we are never 
fully conscious of all that is in our own 
thoughts, except after having written it out. 
So long as it remains shut up in the mind, it 
preserves a certain haziness; we do not see 

o 2 



196 ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 

it completely unfolded ; and we cannot con- 
sider it in all its aspects and bearings. 

Again, while it merely flies through the air 
in words, it retains something vague, mobile, 
and indefinite. Its outlines are loosely drawn, 
its shape is uncertain, the expression of it is more 
or less precarious, and there is always some- 
thing to be added or withdrawn. Tt is never 
more than a sketch. Style only gives to thought 
its just expression, its finished form, and perfect 
manifestation. 

Nevertheless, beware of introducing style 
into the arrangement of your plan ; it ought to 
be like an artist's draught, the sketch, which, 
by a few lines unintelligible to everybody save 
him who has traced them, decides what is to 
enter into the composition of the picture, 
and each object's place. Light and shadow, 
colouring and expression will come later. Or, 
to take another image, the plan is a skeleton, 
the dry bone-frame of the body, repulsive to all 
except the adept in anatomy, but full of 
interest, of meaning, and of significance for 
him who has studied it and who has practised 
dissection ; for there is not a cartilage, a. pro- 
tuberance, or a hollow, which does not mark 



ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 197 

what that structure ought to sustain, — and 
therefore you have here the whole body in 
epitome, the entire organisation in miniature. 

Hence, the moment you feel that your idea 
is mature, and that you are master of it in its 
centre and in its radiations, its main or trunk 
lines, take the pen and throw upon paper what 
you see, what you conceive in your mind. If 
you are young or a novice, allow the pen to 
have its way and the current of thought to flow 
on. There is always life in this first rush, and 
care should be taken not to check its impetus 
or cool its ardour. Let the volcanic lava run ; 
it will become fixed and crystalline of itself. 

Make your plan at the first impulse, and 
follow your inspiration to the end ; after which 
let things alone for a few days, or at least for 
several hours. Then re-read attentively what 
you have written, and give a new form to your 
plan ; that is, re-write it from one end to the 
other, leaving only what is necessary, what is 
essential. Eliminate inexorably whatever is 
accessory or superfluous, and trace, engrave 
with care the leading characteristics which de- 
termine the configuration of the discourse, and 
contain within their demarcations the parts 



198 ARRANGEMENT OF PLAN. 

which are to compass it. Only take pains to 
have the principal features well marked, vividly 
brought out, and strongly connected together, 
in order that the division of the discourse may 
be clear and the links firmly welded. 



199 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 

The essential properties of the plan are deriv- 
able from its very nature. As it is the design 
of the oratorical building, it ought to be drawn 
with neatness, distributed suitably into its com- 
partments, in right proportions, so that at one 
glance, the architect or any one versed in this 
kind of work, should perceive the aim of the 
construction or the idea to be realised, as well 
as the means for attaining it. The plan is a 
failure if it does not suggest to the intelligent 
observer these things. 

First. — The drawing depends on the mind 
which conceives and thinks, and on the hand 
which wields the pencil. A design will always 
bear a sure ratio to the manner of feeling, con- 
ceiving, and reproducing what is seen in nature 
or what is imagined ; and whatever may be the 
dexterity of the hand, if the soul animate it not, 



200 CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 

if the understanding guide it not, it will com- 
pose nothing but images without life, and copies, 
possibly exact, yet void of expression. By the 
simplest touch, by one stroke of the brush, the 
whole soul may be revealed ; witness that great 
painter who recognised his equal from a single 
line traced by him. 

Now what advice can we give on this head ? 
All the precepts in the w r orld will never teach 
feeling or conception. We have said pretty 
nearly all that can be said, when speaking of 
the conception and formation of ideas. But 
what may indeed be recommended to the inex- 
perienced orator is to confine himself in con- 
structing his plan to the salient features of his 
subject, to lay down boldly the trunk lines of 
the discourse, omitting all filling up ; to draw 
broadly, with hatchet- strokes, so to say, and not 
to set about punctuating, not to get lost in 
minutiae, when the business is to mark out the 
main ways. 

Another advice which may be given is, to 
leave nothing obscure, doubtful, or vague in 
these outlines, and to admit no feature into his 
sketch which does not indicate something of 
importance. By practice and the directions of 



CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 201 

a skilful master, lie will learn to deal in those 
potent pencillings which express so much in so 
small a space ; and this it is which makes ex- 
temporisation so easy and so copious, because 
each point of the plan becomes instinct with 
life, and by pressing upon it as you pass along, 
your discourse makes it a spring, gushing with 
luminous ideas and inexhaustible expressions. 

The first etchings of the great masters are 
sometimes more precious in the artist's eye 
than their finished pictures, because they dis- 
close the author's thoughts more unveiled, and 
the means he has adopted for conveying them. 
And in like manner the young writer will 
profitably study the plans of great speakers, in 
order to learn how to model as they did ; and 
what will be still more improving, he will con- 
struct those plans himself from their discourses, 
and by a deep meditation of their masterpieces 
and the intellectual labour which the construc- 
tion just hinted demands, he will get further 
into their innermost thoughts, and will better 
appreciate the relation between those thoughts 
and the magnificent embodiment of them. 

Secondly. — The right distribution of your 
plan depends also on your manner of conceiving 



202 CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 

your subject and the end you have in view in 
your discourse ; nor have general rules much 
practical range even here. What are required 
are, good sense, sagacity, and tact ; good sense 
to see things as they are, in their true light, or 
in their most favourable aspect, so as not to say 
what will not befit the occasion ; sagacity, to 
turn the subject over, penetrate it through, 
analyse it, anatomise it, and exhibit it, first on 
paper, then in speaking ; tact, to speak appro- 
priately, leave in the shade whatever cannot 
appear without disadvantage, and bring out into 
strong light whatever is most in your favour ; 
to put everything in its own place, and to do all 
this quickly, with neatness, clearness, simplicity, 
so that in the very knot of the statement of the 
case may be discerned all the folds and coils of 
the main idea about to be untied and laid forth 
by the discourse. 

An ill- conceived, an ill-divided plan, which 
does not at once bring the hearer in to the 
middle of the subject and in full possession of 
the matter, is rather an encumbrance than a 
help. It is a rickety scaffolding which will 
bear nothing. It but loads and disfigures the 
building instead of serving to raise it. 



CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 203 

Thirdly. — Proportion and harmony in its 
parts contribute to the beauty of a discourse. 
In all things beauty is the result of variety in 
unity and of unity in variety. It is the neces- 
sity of oneness which assigns to each part its 
rank, place, and dimensions. 

Frequently the exordium is too long, and 
the peroration interminable. There is little or 
nothing left for the middle ; and you get a 
monster with an enormous head, a measureless 
tail, and a diminutive body. At other times, 
it is some limb of the discourse which is 
lengthened until the body of the work is out 
of sight, the result being a shocking deformity, 
as when a man has long arms or legs with a 
dwarfs body. The main idea ought to present 
itself in each part ; the hearer ought to be 
led back to it by the development of the ac- 
cessory thoughts, these having no vitality save 
by the sustained circulation of the former. 
Should they grow and dilate too much, it can 
only be at the cost of the parent-idea ; and 
they must produce deformity and a sort of 
disease in the discourse, like those monstrous 
excrescences which devour the animal on which 
there is any irregular or excessive growth of 



204 CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 

one organ, through the abnormal congestion 
of the blood, thus withdrawn from the rest of 
the organisation. 

It is chiefly when you have to extemporise 
that you must take the most care of your di- 
vision, and of the nice allotment of all the 
parts of your plan ; one of the disadvantages 
of extemporisation, and perhaps the greatest, 
being, diffuseness, slowness, and digressiveness, 
— for you cannot always command the result 
amidst the mass of words and the distractions 
of the imagination. 

You will obviate this danger, as far as may 
be, by strongly determining beforehand the 
proportion of the various parts ; and this so 
clearly and so strikingly as never to lose sight 
of it while speaking, and thus to be constantly 
recalled to it, and to recall the hearer athwart 
the digressions, episodes, or sudden develop- 
ments which may present themselves, and which 
are not always to be excluded; nay, sometimes 
amidst the emotions of sensibility or the trans- 
ports of passion, into which by the torrent of 
extemporisation the orator may be hurried. 

Let the plan of the speech, then, be traced 
with a firm hand, distributed with exactitude, 



CHARACTER OF THE PLAN. 205 

and rightly proportioned in all its members, 
and then it will be an immense help to the 
speaker whom the suddenness and adventu- 
rousness of extemporisation invariably agitates 
more or less. He will then abandon himself 
with greater confidence to his inspirations and 
to the tide of words, when he feels a solid 
ground well known to him beneath his feet; 
and is aware of all its advantages and incon- 
veniences, if he remain always mindful of the 
end he has in view and of the way which leads 
to it. 



206 



CHAPTER XV. 

FINAL PREPARATION BEFORE SPEAKING. 

The plan of a discourse, however well put 
together, is still but a barren letter, or, as we 
have said, a species of skeleton to which flesh 
and vitality must be given by words. It is the 
discourse potentially, and has to become such 
actually. Now before passing from the power 
of acting to action, and with a view to effecting 
this passage, which at the very moment of 
executing it is always difficult, there is a last 
preparation not without its importance and 
calculated to conduce largely towards success. 
Thus the soldier gets ready his weapons and 
his resolution before the fight ; thus the general 
makes his concluding arrangements after having 
fixed on his order of battle, and in order to 
carry it well into effect. So is it with the 
speaker. After having fixed his ideas upon 
paper in a clearly defined sketch, which is to 



PREPARATION. 207 

him a plan of the campaign, he ought, a little 
while before entering the lists or battle field, 
to collect himself once more in order to gather 
up all his energies, call forth all the powers of 
his soul, mind, and body for the work which 
he has undertaken, and hold them in the spring 
and direction whither they have to rush. This 
is the culminating point of the preparation, a 
critical moment which is very agitating and 
very painful to whoever is about to speak. We 
shall proceed to depict it, and to show r what 
may then be done towards the success of a 
discourse, by the use of the speaker's entire 
means, that is, of all his intellectual, moral, 
and physical faculties. For the true orator 
speaks with his entire personality, with all the 
powers of his being, and for that reason, at the 
moment just preceding his address, he should 
summon, and marshal, and concentrate all his 
instruments. 



208 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FINAL INTELLECTUAL PREPARATION. 

The plan is written down, but it is exterior to 
the mind, it is on paper ; and although it has 
issued from the mind, still the linking of ideas 
is a thing so subtle that it easily escapes, and 
especially in the midst of the turmoil in which 
the speaker must take his stand, and which is 
liable to present a thousand distracting contin- 
gencies. An hour, therefore, or half an hour, 
or a quarter of an hour before speaking, he 
ought at the last moment to go over his plan 
again silently, review all its parts with their 
connection, settle in the most definite manner 
the main ideas and the order in which they 
occur ; in a word, deeply inscribe or engrave 
in his imagination what is written on the paper, 
so as to be able to read within himself, in his 
own understanding, and this with certainty and 
without effort, the signs of what he has to say. 



FINAL PREPARATION. 209 

This is, as it were, the internal proof-copy of 
the external manuscript, in order that, without 
the help of notes, he may find the whole array 
of his ideas upon the Hying tablets of his ima- 
gination. For this purpose, he sums up that 
array once again, and epitomises it in a few words 
which perform the office at once of colours and 
of sign posts — colours around which are mus- 
tered fragmentary or incidental thoughts, like 
soldiers around their officer, and sign-posts 
indicating the road to be followed in order to 
reach the destination without fail. Finally, by 
one last effort of thought he connects all these 
signs together in order to take them all in at a 
single glance in their respective places and 
their mutual bearings, with a view to the end 
which the discourse is intended to attain ; just 
as a general acts, who, as the fight begins, 
looks from some height upon the ordering of 
his army and sees each division and each regi- 
ment where he had appointed it to be. Then, 
after having possessed himself of the whole by 
means of this glance, he holds it as it were in 
his grasp and can hurl it into action according 
to the plan which he has conceived. It is easy 
to understand that in order to be able to do 

p 



210 FINAL PREPARATION. 

this, the plan must not only have been well 
conceived and well ordered, but clearly written 
out on paper, so that, at a moment of such 
pressure, a single glance may suffice to review 
it both as a whole and in its parts. 

In general, the most concise plans are the 
best, if they be well stored with ideas; and 
whenever it is practicable to reduce all the 
ideas to one, the various consequences of which 
are thus derivatively commanded, nothing can 
be so convenient or so sure. 

This accounts for the fact that one may 
sometimes speak wonderfully well without 
much preparation, and produce a great effect. 
All that is required is one idea, of which the 
speaker is deeply convinced, and the conse- 
quences and applications of which he clearly 
discerns, or else some lively and heart-stirring 
sentiment ; and then the light of the idea or 
the emotion of the feeling bursts forth into words 
like the pent-up torrent of a water-shed through 
a fissure in the dam ; but the w T ater-shed must 
have been full, and the plenteousness of the 
inundation supposes protracted toil for the 
previous collection. It is thus with the most 
prompt and copious extemporisations; they are 



FINAL PREPARATION. 211 

invariably the reservoir of ideas and feelings, 
prepared and accumulated with time, and rush- 
ing forth in a discourse. 

In all cases, what is of the first importance 
is to see all the ideas in a single idea, in order 
to keep up the unity of the subject, amidst the 
variety of exposition and the multiplicity of 
representations ; for in this consists the fine 
ordering of a speech. Once sure of the leading 
idea, the divisions and sub-divisions must be 
rapidly inspected. You must proceed from 
one to the other reflectively in order to test 
what they will be worth at the decisive instant, 
and to penetrate them by a glance of the mind, 
— a glance which is never more vigorous or 
more piercing than at the last moment. It is, 
we repeat, the general who passes among the 
ranks before the signal is given, and who as- 
sures himself by the appearance of his troops 
that they will behave well, while he excites 
their courage by words of fire, and pours fresh 
spirit and boldness into their hearts. He too 
has his picked troops on whom he relies more 
than on the rest, and these picked troops are 
to act at the crisis of the fight. He keeps them 
in reserve to decide the victory, and he is 

p 2 



212 FINAL PREPARATION. 

aware beforehand of all the power with which 
they furnish him. 

So, among the various thoughts which make 
up a discourse ; there are some better calcu- 
lated than others to strike the imagination and 
to move the soul : some stirring picture, some 
unusually interesting narrative, some con- 
vincing proof, some motive which will carry 
away the hearer's decision ; and the like. The 
orator, during his final preparation, distin- 
guishes and places in reserve these resources. 
He arranges them appropriately so as to bring 
them in at such a part of his discourse ; and 
without fully fathoming them before it is time, 
he keeps them under his eye, well knowing 
that here are wells of living water which shall 
gush forth when he desires it, at a touch of the 
sounding rod. Upon such means the success 
of a speech generally turns, as the winning of 
a battle upon a charge opportunely made. 

Only care must be taken not to confound 
these reserves of idea, these well husbanded 
resources, with what are called hits of eloquence 
or effective phrases. These last devices which 
sometimes fling a brilliant radiance over a speech 
by a semblance of originality, by eccentric 



FINAL PREPARATION. 213 

perceptions, by far- fetched approximations, and 
above all by strangeness of expression, run the 
risk almost invariably of sacrificing sense to 
sound, substance to form, and of superseding 
depth of thought and warmth of feeling by sound 
of words and an exaggerated oratorical delivery. 
You get to aim at effect, that is, at astonishing 
your hearers and making them admire you ; 
you therefore use every means of dazzling and 
confounding them, which is nearly always done 
at the expense of your subject's truthfulness and 
of your own dignity. Besides, as you cannot 
extemporise these effective phrases, because the 
effect depends on a certain combination of 
words very difficult to arrange and is spoiled 
if a single word be misapplied, you have to 
compose these phrases beforehand, learn them 
by heart, and know them literally ; and even 
then you have still to get them into your dis- 
course and to prepare their admission, in order 
that they may make a brilliant appearance and 
produce the wished-for effect. The conse- 
quence is that you convey them from a greater 
or smaller distance with more or less artifice 
and disguise, so that a part of the exposition is 
devoted to clearing the way for them, and to 



214 FINAL PREPARATION. 

marshalling their entry on the boards — -a pro- 
cess which necessarily entails fillings-up, gaps, 
and lengthiness in various passages respectively. 
And, indeed, these brilliant hits which dis- 
charge a great amount of sparks, and a small 
amount of either light or heat, are for the most 
part purchased at the price of the truthfulness 
as well as the interest of the discourse. It is 
a firework display which dazzles and charms 
for a moment only to plunge you in thick 
darkness again. 

This is not a genuine nor moving eloquence ; 
it is the parody of eloquence and a mere parade 
of words ; if I may dare to say so, a sort of 
oratorical charlatanry. Woe to the speaker 
who makes use of such means ! He will 
speedily exhaust himself by the mental efforts 
to find out new effects, and his addresses, 
aiming at the sublime and the extraordinary, 
will become often ludicrous, always impotent. 

Nor must you rely on the notes which you 
may carry in your hand to help you in the 
exposition and to save you from breaking down. 
Doubtless, they may have their utility, especi- 
ally in business speaking, as at the bar, at the 
council board, or in a deliberative assembly. 



FINAL PREPARATION. 215 

Sometimes they are even necessary to re- 
member facts or to state figures. They are 
the material part, the baggage of the orator, 
and he should lighten it and disencumber 
himself of this burden, to the utmost of his 
power. In truth, on the very occasions when 
notes should seem to be most needed, they are 
totally worthless. In the most fervid moments 
of extemporaneous speaking, when light teems, 
and the sacred fire burns, when the mind is 
hurried along upon the tide of thoughts, and 
the tongue, obedient to its impulse, accommo- 
dates itself in a wonderful manner to its opera- 
tions, and lavishes the treasures of expression, 
everything should proceed from within. The 
mind's glance is bent inwards, absorbed by the 
subject and its ideas, you distinguish none of 
the external objects, and you can no longer 
even read your notes on the paper. You see 
the lines without understanding them, and they 
become an embarrassment instead of a help. 
Nothing so thoroughly freezes the oratorical 
flow as to consult those wretched notes. No- 
thing is so inimical to the prestige of eloquence ; 
it forthwith brings down to the common earth 
both the speaker and his audience. 

Try then, when you have to speak, to carry 



216 FINAL PREPARATION. 

all things in yourself, like Bias the philosopher, 
and after having, to the best of your ability, 
conscientiously prepared, allow yourself, filled 
with your subject, to be borne along by the 
current of your ideas and the tide of words, 
and above all by the Spirit from on High who 
enlightens and inspires. He who cannot speak 
except with notes, knows not how to speak, 
nor what speaking is ; so the man of lore knows 
not what learning is, if he be so only with his 
books around him. 

In fine, you must distrust all methods of 
mnemonics or artificial memory, intended to 
localise and to bind together in your imagina- 
tion the different parts of your address. Cicero 
and Quintilian recommend them, I think, in 
moderation; be it so, but let it be in the 
strictest possible moderation. For it is putting 
the mechanism of form in the stead of the or- 
ganisation of thoughts, — substituting arbitrary 
and conventional links for the natural associa- 
tion of ideas ; at the very least, it is introducing 
into the head an apparatus of signs, forms, or 
images which are to serve as a support to the 
discourse, and which must needs burden, ob- 
scure, and hamper the march of it. 

If your address be the expression of an idea 



FINAL PREPARATION. 217 

fraught with life, it will develope itself natu- 
rally, as plants germinate, as animals grow, 
through the sustained action of a vital force, by 
an incessant organic operation, by the effusion 
of a living principle. It ought to issue from 
the depths of the soul, as the stream from its 
spring — ex abundantia cordis os loquitur, "out 
of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh." 
But a heart there must be; and in that 
heart a fulness of feeling, manifesting itself by 
a plenitude of ideas, which will give in its 
turn plenitude of expression. The mouth 
speaks with ease when the heart is full ; but if 
it be empty, the head takes its office, and it is 
the head which has recourse to these artificial 
means, for want of the inspiration which fails 
it. It is the resource of rhetoricians. 



218 



CHAPTER XVII. 

FINAL MORAL PREPARATION. 

When you at last are in possession of your 
plan, and have engraved it upon your under- 
standing, in the manner we have just said, you 
must try to remain calm and collected. This 
is not always easy, you may have to speak at 
the bar, or in a public scene, or a deliberative 
assembly : you are not in such cases free to 
choose your own moment, and you have to be 
ready for the occasion. You may have to wait 
long for your turn, and till then there occur un- 
avoidable distractions, from which you must 
keep yourself safe. If the will reject them, the 
mind remains self-possessed, and may even pre- 
serve its collectedness amidst the most varied 
scenes, which indeed may touch the senses, 
without disturbing the mind. 



FINAL PREPARATION. 219 

But if you have it in your power to remain 
in solitude until the moment for speaking, as 
generally happens to the preacher and the 
lecturer, it is well to avoid all external excite- 
ment which might change the current of the 
thoughts, and drive your attention into an- 
other channel. You should then take refuge 
within the depth of yourself, as in a sanctuary 
where the Almighty has deigned to manifest 
Himself, since your object in speaking is but 
to announce the truth, and the Almighty is 
Truth itself. 

I do not speak here of those men who dis- 
course solely in the interests of passion or of 
party, and whose object is not the triumph of 
what is true, but merely the gain of some 
success, some advantage, conducive to their 
ambition, their pride or their avarice. These 
men will never be orators in the proper sense of 
the word — vir bonus dicendi peritus ; for lan- 
guage ought not to be used except in the 
interests of truth — to employ it for any other 
end is to make of it a commodity or a traffic. 

If in the stage which we are depicting, the 
soul of him who is about to speak be liable to 
be affected, by the variety of character, predis- 



2*20 FINAL PREPARATION. 

position, and momentary state, sometimes, after 
the final preparation is over, it perceives that 
it possesses its subject, that it is master of it, 
so far as this may be, and it then experiences 
a certain sense of security which is not without 
sweetness. A mind in this state need not 
think any more, but may remain passive and 
repose itself ere proceeding to action. It has 
sometimes happened to myself to fall asleep 
while awaiting the summons to the pulpit, 
to lose consciousness, at least, and to awake 
refreshed. 

At other times, and indeed more frequently, 
a man is restless and agitated. The chest is 
weighted with a heavy burden which checks 
the breathing, makes the limbs sore, and op- 
presses all the faculties of mind and body. 
This is an extremely painful state, especially 
if a man has to speak on a grave occasion, or 
on a solemn day, in the pulpit. He is then 
conscious that there is a divine duty to be dis- 
charged, and there is a fear of proving unfaith- 
ful or unequal to it ; he feels the full weight 
of responsibility before God. It is a truly 
agonising sensation, in which several feelings 
are blended, and which it may not be useless 



FINAL PREPARATION. 221 

to analyse, in order to distinguish what it com- 
prises that is legitimate, that is advantageous 
to an orator, and, on the contrary, what is amiss 
in it and liable to do him harm. 

In the first place, it is to be noted that this 
sensation, experienced by him who is on the 
point of speaking, is salutary, to a certain ex- 
tent, but if it go to the length of paralysing 
the orator, or of impairing the use of his means, 
it is inconvenient and fatal ; those whom it is 
able thus to crush, will never be capable of 
speaking in public, as we have already observed 
in the case of two celebrated writers, admirable 
for their style and powerless in harangue. 

Woe to him who experiences no fear before 
speaking in public ! It shows him to be un- 
conscious of the importance of the function 
which he is about to discharge, — that he does 
not understand what truth is, whose apostle he 
himself should be, or that he little cares, and 
that he is not animated by that sacred fire 
which comes down from heaven to burn in the 
soul. I except altogether the Prophets, the 
Apostles of Jesus Christ, all who speak under 
supernatural inspiration, and who have been 
commanded not to prepare what they shall say 



222 FINAL PREPARATION. 

when they stand before the arbiters of the world, 
for that all they should say shall be given to 
them at the time itself. 

It is not for men like these that we write. 
The Almighty, whose instruments they are, 
and who fills them with His Spirit, makes them 
act and speak as He pleases, and to them the 
resources of human experience are entirely un- 
necessary. They fear not, because He who 
is truth and light is with them, and speaks by 
them. But others fear not because their en- 
lightenment is small and their self-assurance 
great. They are unconscious of the sacredness 
of their task and of their ministry, and they go 
forward like children who, knowing not what 
they do, play with some terrible weapon, and 
with danger itself. The most valiant troops 
always feel some emotion at the first cannon 
shot, and I have heard it stated that one of the 
most celebrated generals of the empire, — who 
was even called "the bravest of the brave," was 
always obliged to dismount from his horse at 
that solemn moment; after which he rushed 
like a lion into the battle. Braggarts, on the 
contrary, are full of assurance before the en- 
gagement, and give way during the action. 



FINAL PREPARATION. 2*23 

So is it with those fine talkers, who think 
themselves competent to undertake any subject 
and to face any audience, and who, in the ex- 
cellent opinion which they entertain of them- 
selves, do not even think of making any serious 
preparation. After a few phrases uttered with 
confidence, they hesitate, they break down, or 
if they have sufficient audacity to push forward 
amidst the confusion of their thoughts and the 
incoherency of their discourse, they twaddle 
without understanding their own words, and 
drench their audience with their inexhaustible 
volubility. 

It is well then to feel somewhat afraid ere 
speaking, first in order that you may not 
lightly expose yourself to mortification ; and, 
in the second place, that if you are obliged to 
speak, you may maturely consider what you 
should say, seriously study your subject, pene- 
trate it, become master of it, and thus be able 
to speak usefully to a public audience. 

The fear in question is also useful in making 
the speaker feel his want of help from above, 
such as shall give him the adequate light, 
strength, and vividness of life. All men who 
have experience in public speaking, and who 



224 FINAL PREPARATION. 

have ever themselves been eloquent, know how 
much they have owed to the inspiration of the 
moment, and to that mysterious power which 
gives it. It is precisely because a man may 
have sometimes received this efficacy from 
above, rendering him superior to himself, that 
he dreads being reduced to his own strength in 
that critical situation, and so to prove beneath 
the task which he has to accomplish. 

This fear which agitates the soul of a person 
about to speak, has also another and a less 
noble cause, which unfortunately prevails in 
the majority of instances ; that is, self-love — 
vanity, which dreads falling below oneself and 
below the expectations of men, — a desire of 
success and of applause. Public speaking is a 
singularly conspicuous sort of thing, exposing 
a person to all manners of observations. Doubt- 
less there is no harm in seeking the esteem of 
one's fellows, and the love of a good reputation 
is an honourable motive of action, capable of 
producing excellent effects. But carried too 
far, it becomes a love of glory, a passion to 
make a dazzling appearance, and to cause one's- 
self to become the theme of talk, — and then, 
like all other passions, it is ready to sacrifice 



FINAL PREPARATION. 22° 

truth, justice, and good to its own gratification 
or success. 

Nothing can be better than that the orator 
should endeavour to please and satisfy his 
audience ; that desire will impel him to noble 
exertions and the exercise of all his means ; but 
that, while actually speaking, such an end 
should engross him above everything else, and 
that the care of his own glory should agitate 
him more than any love of the truths w 7 hich he 
has to announce, or of the souls of the hearers 
whom he should enlighten and edify, — this, I 
say, is a gross abuse, a perversion of the 
talent and of the ministry intrusted to him by 
Providence, and sooner or later it will bring 
him to grief. This inordinate attention to him- 
self and his success agitates, disturbs, and 
makes him unhappy, — too often inciting him 
to exaggerations for the sake of effect. In 
taking away from him simplicity it takes away 
his right sense, his tact, his good taste, and 
he becomes displeasing by dint of striving to 
please. 

Yet far from us be the idea of condemning a 
love of glory in the orator, and especially in the 
lay orator. While still young a man needs 

Q 



226 FINAL PREPARATION. 

this spur, which sometimes produces prodigies 
of talent and of labour ; and it may safely be 
affirmed that very great progress must have 
been made in wisdom and perfection to dispense 
with it altogether. Even where it ought to 
have the least influence, it still too often has 
sway, and the minister of the holy Word, who 
ought to be inspired by the Spirit from on High, 
and to refer exclusively to God all that he may 
do, has much difficulty in preserving himself 
indifferent to the praises of men, seeking these 
praises only too often, and thus making self, 
almost unconsciously, the end of his speaking 
and of his success. In such a case the move- 
ments of nature and of grace get mingled in 
his heart, and it is hard to distinguish and 
separate them. This is the reason why so 
many deceive themselves, and why piety itself 
has its illusions. 

If it is good to entertain some fear before 
speaking, it would nevertheless be prejudicial 
to entertain too much : first, because a great 
fear disturbs the power of expression ; and 
secondly, because if it does not proceed from 
timidity of character, it often springs from ex- 
cessive self-love, from too violent an attachment 



FINAL PREPARATION. 



227 



to praise, or from the passion of glory, which 
overcomes the love of truth. The real orator 
should have truth alone in view; he should 
forget himself in presence of the truth and 
make it alone appear, — and this happens natu- 
rally, spontaneously, whenever he is profoundly 
impressed by it, and identifies himself with it, 
heart and mind. Then he grows like it, great, 
mighty, and dazzling. It is no longer he who 
lives, it is the truth which lives and acts in him ; 
his language is truly inspired; the man vanishes 
in the virtue of the Almighty who manifests 
Himself by His organ, — and this is the 
speaker's noblest, truest glory. Then are 
wrought the miracles of eloquence which turn 
men's wills and change their souls. Such is 
the end at which the Christian orator should 
aim. He should try to dwarf himself, to anni- 
hilate himself, as it were, in his discourse, in 
order to allow Him whose minister he is, to 
speak and to work, — a result oftenest attained 
when the speaker thinks he has done nothing, 
from his too fervent and too natural desire to 
do a great deal. 

Oh, you who have taken the Lord for your 
inheritance, and who prefer the light and ser- 

Q 2 



228 FINAL PREPARATION. 

vice of Heaven to all the honours and all the 
works of earth, — you, particularly, who are 
called to the Apostleship, and who glow with 
the desire to announce to men the word of God ! 
remember that here, more than anywhere else, 
virtue consists in disinterestedness, and power 
in abnegation of self. Endeavour to see in the 
triumphs of eloquence, if they be granted you, 
one thing only, — the glory of God. If you 
have the gift of touching the souls of others, 
seek one thing only, — to bring them to God. 
For this end repress, stifle within your heart, 
the natural movements of pride, which, since 
the days of sin, would attribute all things to 
itself, even the most manifest and the most 
precious gifts ; and each time that you have to 
Convey to the people the Word of Heaven, ask 
urgently of God the grace to forget yourself, 
and to think of Him and of Him only. 



229 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

/j c BODILY PREPARATION. 

The body also requires to be prepared in a 
certain manner before an harangue. It should 
be subjected to a sort of magnetism, as the 
phrase runs in these days ; and the orator who 
knows the difficulties and the resources of his 
art will take very good care not to undertake a 
speech, unless he is compelled by circumstances 
to do so, without making his arrangements in 
this respect too. 

Let it not be forgotten that the body plays 
its part in all that we do, even in the most 
abstract thoughts and the most exquisite feel- 
ings. We are not angels, and the human soul 
cannot act here below without the co-operation 
of the organisation to which it is united, and 
which forms an essential part of its personality. 
The Ugo, in truth, is applicable to the functions 
of the body no less than to those of the mind. 
A man says : " I walk, / eat, I digest," as he 



230 BODILY PREPARATION. 

says, u I think, I wish, I love ;" and although 
the organs have an inferior office in human 
actions, yet that office is sufficiently consider- 
able for the organs to promote or to impede those 
actions in a signal manner. The body then should 
be well disposed in order that the intellectual 
and moral functions may be properly performed, 
and that they may not experience a hindrance 
where they ought to find an assistance. In the 
first place, the general state of the health ought 
to be good, or at least tolerable, in order that 
the thinking power may enjoy instruments 
ready to receive its impulses, and the will be 
able easily to set them in motion. 

A man speaks with difficulty when suffering. 
Life is then checked, and absorbed by th£ 
organs, which divert it from intellectual action, 
or at least weaken its activity. One may, 
doubtless, by an effort of the will, excited -by 
circumstances, do violence to the rebellion or 
inertness of the body, anet hurl it into action, — 
but never without great fatigue, an exhaustion 
of one's strength ; and, later, its indisposition 
and its decay entail a painful reaction after 
this unseasonable soaring, so that the higher 
the previous elevation, the deeper the subse- 



BODILY PREPARATION. 231 

quent fall. Now the orator ought to spare a 
servant so necessary to him, just as an accom- 
plished rider treats the generous steed whom 
he might ruin on a single occasion by over 
urging him. 

The orator should have a strong constitution ; 
he should have a sound head, a good digestion, 
and, above all, a robust chest, for nothing is so 
fatiguing or so exhausting as declamation when 
long continued. I speak of oratorical declama- 
tion, which brings simultaneously into action 
the whole person, moral and physical, — the head, 
all the economy of which is strained to the 
uttermost by extemporisation ; the lungs, which 
inhale and respire with violence, frequently 
with a shock and a gulp, according to the dis- 
course ; the larynx, which is expanded and con- 
tracted precipitately ; the nervous system, which 
is wound up to the highest degree of sensi- 
bility; tr^e muscular system which is keenly 
agitated by the oratorical stage-play from the 
sole of the foot to the tips of the fingers ; and, 
finally, the blood which warms, boils, makes 
heart and arteries beat with quick strokes, and 
shoots fire through the whole organisation, till 
the humours of the body evaporate and stream 



232 BODILY PREPARATION. 

in drops of perspiration along the surface of the 
skin. Judge from this whether, in order to 
bear such fatigue, health and vigour be required. 
Nevertheless, there is an illusion against 
which you must be on your guard ; it is that of 
thinking yourself ill when you have to speak in 
public, and to mistake for inability the often 
very sensible indisposition which you expe- 
rience when called upon for a discourse, either 
through the indolence which is combated by 
labour and fatigue, or on account of the extreme 
emotion which is felt at the thought of appear- 
ing in public, an emotion which produces on the 
body, and on the bowels especially, an effect 
reacting all over you. Your arms and legs 
hang dead, you can hardly drag yourself along, 
or even stand upright. There is an oppression 
of the respiration, a weight on the chest, and a 
man experiences, in a fashion sometimes very 
burdensome, what has been felt by the bravest 
at the first cannon-shot. Many a time do I re- 
member having found myself in this state at 
the moment for mounting the pulpit and while 
waiting for my summons. Could I have fled 
away without shame, most assuredly I should 
have done so, I envied the lot of those poor 



BODILY PREPARATION. 233 

creatures who think of nothing, and who know 
not these mental agonies and lacerations. 

They who have not the strength to overcome 
these temptations and discouragements will 
never know how to speak. They will not even 
have the courage to expose themselves to such 
trials, I may as well say it, they amount occa- 
sionally to such a torture that a man involun- 
tarily compares himself to a convict dragged to 
the gallows. Those who have known this state 
and triumphed over it are aware that I do not 
exaggerate. 

Strange ! It proves the contradictions which 
exist in man as he is, whose original consti- 
tution has been overthrown by sin which has 
set in opposition to each other, in one and the 
same person, the various elements which ought 
to harmonise in the unity of a single life. You 
wish and you do not wish simultaneously ; the 
body is at war with the mind, and their laws 
come into collision and into conflict. The soul, 
enlightened by divine truth, touched by charity, 
transported by the Spirit of God, or by the love 
of glory, desires to proclaim what it sees, 
knows, believes, feels, even in the teeth of con- 
tradiction, and at the cost of the greatest 



234 BODILY PREPARATION. 

fatigue, nay, sometimes of the sharpest suffer- 
ings ; but the body, like some unbroken beast, 
refuses to the utmost of its power, and you 
cannot get it along save with a bloody spur. 
It resists with all its might, takes every oppor- 
tunity of evasion, every opportunity to shake 
off the reins which rule it and control its move- 
ments. A man of spirit would afterwards be 
inconsolable that he should have shrunk at the 
moment of appearing in public, if duty call 
him, like the soldier who wavered at the begin- 
ning of the action ; and yet, in the former case, 
I can bear witness that a man would, a hun- 
dred times over, surrender his task ere under- 
taking it, — if he dared. 

I know but one effectual remedy for this 
fear, — -the remedy I have already indicated ; 
it is never to mount platform or pulpit, save 
on the call of conscience alone, — to fulfil a 
duty, and to put aside whatever is merely 
personal, — glory, reputation, public opinion, — 
whatever relates to self. A man then goes 
forward as a victim of duty, resigned to the 
sacrifice, and seeking only the glory of Him 
to whom the sacrifice is offered. You never 
succeed better than under these conditions, 



BODILY PREPARATION. 235 

and everybody is a gainer ; the speaker, in 
calmness, dignity, land simplicity, — the audience, 
in a loftier and more penetrating address, be- 
cause it is untainted by selfishness and almost 
above what is merely human. 

Some persons calculate upon giving them- 
selves courage by stimulating drinks or by a 
generous nourishment. A strange sort of 
courage that ! In war, where physical force 
predominates, I can conceive such a thing, — 
and it is a resource not to be disdained before 
a battle ; but as our business is a battle of elo- 
quence, that is of the subtlest, most intelligent, 
and most mental element that can be imagined, 
there is need of another spirit rather than the 
spirit of alcohol or of wine to stimulate the 
faculties and warm the heart. Orators who 
have recourse to such means in order to become 
capable of moving their hearers, will never get 
beyond the sphere of the imagination and of 
the senses, and if they ever have any eloquence, 
it will be that of the clubs, the taproom, and the 
crossroads, — an eloquence which has a power of 
its own, but in the interest of evil passions. 

Finally, in a physical respect, there are pre- 
cautions to be taken, relatively to such and such 



236 BODILY PREPARATION. 

an organ which, from its habitual weakness, or 
its irritated state may need repose or strength- 
ening. In this, each person must manage 
according to his temperament, constitution, and 
habits. Some are unable to speak fasting, and 
no wonder ; for it is indispensable to be well 
supported against a fatigue so great. The 
voice is weakened, broken by inanition or an 
empty stomach. 

Others, again, cannot speak after a meal, 
and this too is intelligible ; because the labour 
of thinking draws the blood to the head, and 
defrauds the stomach of it, thus stopping diges- 
tion, — so that the blood throbs violently in the 
head and produces giddiness. As in all other 
earthly cases, the right course here is the middle 
course. You should have had nourishment, but 
in moderation : and you should not speak, except 
before digestion has begun its labour, or else 
after it has so far proceeded as not to be any 
longer liable to be arrested. 

Every one must settle his own regimen of 
health in this matter, and nobody can know 
what will agree with him so well as the speaker 
himself. He will therefore do as did the 
athletes of old, who underwent a most rigor- 



BODILY PREPARATION. 237 

ous discipline in order that they might be 
masters of their whole strength at the moment 
of conflict ; and if they had this resolution who 
contended in mere bodily strifes, and for perish- 
able garlands, what ought not the wrestlers of 
eloquence to undergo, whom the Almighty 
calls to the battles of intelligence, to the pro- 
clamation and the defence of truth, of justice, 
of excellence, of the noblest things of both 
heaven and earth, and to a share in their death- 
less glory ! 



238 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE DISCOURSE. 

We have said how the orator should prepare 
in mind, heart, and even body, for the great 
work of addressing others ; let us now follow 
him to his field of action at the moment when 
he is about to establish truth, or combat error 
with the sword of eloquence. This is the 
solemn moment of battle. 

For the sake of greater clearness we will 
divide this consideration into six points, and 
arrange under that number of heads all that 
we have to say that may be the most useful. 
We do not aim in this at laying down any in- 
violable order, but merely at having a frame 
to unite and connect our remarks, our reflec- 
tions, and the results of our experience ; for 
we must here repeat that we have had no in- 
tention of writing a treatise on the oratorical 
art j our object being merely to give an account 



PARTS OF THE DISCOURSE. 239 

to others of what we have done ourselves, and 
of how we have done it. 

We shall speak serially : first, of the begin- 
ning of the discourse, or exordium ; secondly, 
of the entry upon the subject; thirdly, of the 
realisation of the plan, or the exposition and 
the progression of the ideas ; fourthly, of the 
supreme (all decisive) moment of the discourse ; 
fifthly, of the peroration ; sixthly, of oratorical 
action. 



240 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE BEGINNING OR EXORDIUM. 

I term the beginning everything which the 
orator utters from the moment he opens his 
mouth to the moment when he not merely 
shows the object of his discourse, but enters 
into and developes his subject. " What I know 
best is my opening," says the confidant in the 
comedy of the " Plaideurs" This is true of 
him who recites a written discourse ; it is not 
true of him who extemporises. His opening- 
is that which he knows worst, because he is not 
yet under weigh and he has to get so. 

I am well aware that a man can write his 
exordium and learn it by heart. It is a useful 
practice in certain cases, and for persons 
who have the habit of blending written with 
extemporary passages, and of stepping alter- 
nately from what they have learnt by heart 
to what they unfold that very instant from 



THE COMMENCEMENT. 241 

their minds. There are speakers who go 
through this process remarkably well, and who 
contrive to produce an effect chiefly by decla- 
mation prepared beforehand. I do not blame 
them for it. The art of speaking is so difficult 
that you must do in each position what you 
can, and all is well that ends well. Besides, 
as in every applied theory, the art must be 
made to fit the talents of each practitioner. 
Minds are so various, that what suits one does 
not suit another, — so that here no absolute 
laws exist. 

Nevertheless I believe I may assert that the 
true orator, — that is, he who does not recite, 
but who speaks, — is not inclined to employ 
this process, and hardly finds it answer when 
he has recourse to it. The very most he can 
do is to prepare his first sentence, and if he tries 
to learn a whole exordium he generally entan- 
gles himself, gets confused, and fares worse 
than if he had spoken. Even in his exordium 
he needs the freedom of his paces ; — the one 
thing indispensable is to keep well before his 
mind the exact enunciation of his subject, and 
as rigorous and simple a formula as possible of 
the idea which he has to exhibit. Here should 



242 THE COMMENCEMENT. 

be no vagueness nor obscurity, but a clear in- 
tuition and an unhesitating expression. It is 
in this that the majority of would-be extem- 
porisers fail, because, for want of reflection and 
meditation, they know clearly neither the ob- 
ject of their discourse nor the way to treat it. 
They perceive it in the gross or approximately, 
and thereupon they utter common-places, empty 
generalities, and turn continually around and 
about their subject, without ever once going 
into it. 

Those who speak are in quite a different 
position at starting from that of persons who 
recite. They are generally weak and rather 
obscure in the opening, whereas the others ap- 
pear strong and brilliant. But it is the same 
with whatever has life in nature. Life always 
opens by an obscure point, hardly perceptible, 
and proceeds from darkness to light. Accord- 
ing to Genesis, all things were created from 
night to morning. But life grows and assumes 
organisation little by little, and finally it blooms 
into all its magnificence. So with the spoken 
address, which is a something endued with life, 
it is born, it grows, it assumes organisation in 
the hearer's presence. 



THE COMMENCEMENT. 243 

For this reason, the speaker ought to begin 
softly, modestly, and without any pompous 
announcement of what is to follow. The grain 
of mustard-seed, which is the smallest of seeds, 
produces a great tree in which the birds of 
heaven come and take shelter. 

The exordium of an extemporaneous dis- 
course ought to be the simplest thing in the 
world. Its principal use is in laying the sub- 
ject well down and in giving a glimpse of the 
idea which has to be developed. 

Unquestionably, if circumstances require it, 
you may also introduce certain oratorical pre- 
cautions, — insinuations, commendations, and a 
delicate and supple mind always finds a way to 
insert these things. But, generally they clog 
the] mind, because they are outside of its idea 
and may divert it from the idea ; and as the 
expressions are not ready made, the mind runs 
a risk of being carried away from its subject 
at the first start, and of missing its plan. 

For the same reason, the speaker's voice will 
be moderate, nay a little weak at first, and it 
may happen, at least in a vast audience, that 
his first expressions are not heard, or are heard 
ill. This is of course an inconvenience, but it 

R 2 



244 THE COMMENCEMENT. 

cannot be helped, and it is not without its ad- 
vantages. 

Tt cannot be helped, or can scarcely be so, 
because as he who extemporises carries all his 
ideas in his brain, and is never quite sure of his 
language, he always gets into the pulpit or 
upon the platform in a state of deep emotion. 
Now it is out of the question to bawl when in 
that state, and it is the most one can do to find 
voice at all; the mouth is dry, the tongue 
cleaves to the palate, — " vox faucibus hceret" — 
and one can hardly articulate. 

Besides, should the orator force his voice in 
the beginning, it will be presently rendered 
hoarse, broken, exhausted, and it will fail him 
before a quarter of an hour. You must speak 
neither too loudly nor too fast at first ; or else 
the violent and rapid expansions and contrac- 
tions of the larynx force it and falsify it. You 
must husband your voice at starting in order 
that it may last and maintain itself to the end. 
When you gradually strengthen and animate it, 
it does not give way, — it remains clear, strong, 
and pleasing to the close of your harangue. 
Now this is a very important particular for 
speaker and for hearers ; for the former, because 



THE COMMENCEMENT. 245 

he keeps sound and powerful the instrument 
without which he can do nothing ; for the latter, 
because nothing tires them more than hoarse, 
obstreperous, and ill- articulated sounds. 

The inconvenience in question has the further 
advantage of establishing silence among the au- 
dience, especially if it is considerable and 
diffused over a vast space, as in churches. At 
the beginning of a sermon, there is always 
noise ; people taking their places, chairs or 
benches turning, coughs, pocket-handkerchiefs, 
murmurs, a hubbub more or less protracted 
which is unavoidable in a large assembly of 
persons settling themselves. But if you speak 
low, softly, and the audience sees you speak, 
without hearing you, it will make haste to be 
still that it may listen, and all ears will be 
directed more eagerly towards the pulpit. In 
general, men esteem only what they have not, 
or what they dread losing, and the words which 
they fear they shall not be able to catch, become 
more valuable. 

For the same reason, again, the bearing of 
the extemporaneous speaker is modest and even 
somewhat abashed, as he presents himself in 
the pulpit, or on the platform ; for he almost 



246 THE COMMENCEMENT. 

invariably mounts thither as to the place of 
torture, so full is he of anguish, so heavy feels 
the burden of speaking. Nevertheless, he 
must beware of allowing his agitation to be too 
apparent, and above all of affecting the victim. 
For the rest, if he be a true orator, his counte- 
nance, as well as interior feelings, will soon 
change. He will hardly have pronounced a 
few sentences ere all his confusion will vanish, 
the mind will assert its superiority and sway 
the body. Once face to face, and at grappling 
point with his idea, he will forget everything 
else. He will no longer see anything save the 
thought which he has to manifest, the feeling 
of his heart which he has to communicate. His 
voice, which just now was so tremulous and 
broken, will acquire assurance, authority, bril- 
liancy; if he is rightly inspired that day, if 
light from on high beams in his intelligence 
and warms his soul, his eyes will shoot light- 
ning, and his voice the thunderbolt ; his coun- 
tenance will shine like the sun, and the weak- 
ness of humanity will undergo its transfigur- 
ation. He will stand on the Mount Thabor of 
eloquence. 



247 



CHAPTER XXI. 

ENTRANCE INTO THE SUBJECT. 

After the exordium, which should clearly 
and briefly lay down the theme of the discourse, 
as well as its division, the business must be en- 
tered upon and the developement begun. 

This is perhaps the hardest part of extempo- 
raneous speaking, and that in which it offers 
most disadvantages. The point is to get out of 
harm, and there is but a narrow passage which 
it is easy to miss. A favourable wind is neces- 
sary to waft you into the open sea. Many are 
wrecked in this passage, and know not how to 
get out into the open sea of their subject. 

In writing you have time for reflection, and 
can arrange at leisure the sequence of your ideas. 
Nevertheless, everybody knows what trouble 
this arrangement often costs, and how great the 
perplexity is in distinguishing amidst seve- 
ral ideas that which commands the rest and will 



248 ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 

open a way for them, as a principle has its 
consequences and a cause its effects. Some- 
times whole hours are consumed in seeking the 
end of the chain, so as to unrol it suitably, and 
too often, as when trying to disentangle a skein 
of thread, you proceed awkwardly and you 
complicate, instead of develope the subject. 
This is one of the chief annoyances of those 
who want to write, especially in the period of 
impatient, fancy -rid den youth, when one readily 
mistakes whatever glitters or produces effect, 
for the main point and the thing essential. 
A rare sagacity, or much reflection is requisite 
to catch, at the first glance, the true serial con- 
nection of ideas, and to put everything in its 
right place, without groping and without un- 
successful trials. 

What then, if you must decide at once 
without hesitation, without being able to " try," 
before an audience, which has its eyes riveted 
upon you, its ears intent, and its expectation 
eagerly awaiting the words that are to fall from 
your lips ? The slightest delay is out of the 
question, and you must rush into the arena, 
often but half accoutred or ill-armed. The 
moment is come, you must begin to speak, even 



ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 249 

though you do not exactly know what you 
are going to say, nor whether what you shall 
say will lead precisely to the passage which 
leads into the open sea. This is a critical in- 
stant for the orator, an instant which will decide 
the fate of his discourse. 

No doubt he has prepared the sequence of 
his thoughts, and he is in possession of his plan. 
But this plan comprises only the leading ideas 
stationed widely apart, and in order to reach 
the first station from the starting point, there is 
a rush to make and an aim to take, and therein 
lies the difficulty. The best way is to enter at 
once upon your subject. But a man has not always 
the courage and the strength to do this; be- 
sides which, he is afraid of being deficient in 
materials if he makes short work with his ex- 
position, and thus of breaking down after a 
while, without having filled up the time assigned 
to them. This is a common illusion among 
beginners. They are always in dread of want- 
ing sufficient materials, and either in their plan, 
or in their discourse, they heap up all manner 
of things, and end by being lengthy, diffuse, 
and confused. A man is never short of mate- 
rials, when he is in the true line of his deve- 



250 ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 

lopement. But be must strike the rock with the 
rod of Moses, and above all he must strike it 
as God has commanded in order that the waters 
may gush from it in an inexhaustible stream. 
When the miner has touched the right lode, 
wealth abounds. 

Unfortunately, things do not always happen 
thus. Too often one takes the first path that 
offers to reach the main idea, and that path is 
not always the straightest nor the clearest. 
Once in the way, with eyes bent towards the 
point of destination, a man plies, not indeed 
the oars, but words, in order to attain the 
idea, and he attains it only by circuitous and 
tortuous efforts. The hearer who is following 
you does not very well see whither you are 
leading him, and if this position continues for 
a little longer, the discomfort of the speaker 
gains upon the listeners, and a coldness is dif- 
fused among the assembly. 

Have you at times contemplated from the 
shore a white sail striving to leave the road- 
stead, and by the wind's help to gain the offing ? 
It tacks in all directions, to gain its object, and 
when baulked, it flutters inwards and oscillates 
without advancing, until at last the favourable 



ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 251 

breeze distends it, and then it passes swiftly 
over the waters, enters upon the open sea, and 
speedily vanishes below the horizon. Thus it 
is with the orator who misses his right course 
in the first instance. Eager to set out, he 
hoists his sail to the first wind that blows, and 
disappointed, he tries again with as poor suc- 
cess, and runs the risk of either not advancing 
or of taking a wrong line. He then makes for 
the first image that presents itself, and it be- 
guiles him far from his subject. He would fain 
return, but no longer knows his way. He sees 
his goal afar, eluding him, as Ithaca escaped 
Ulysses, and like Ulysses he may wander long 
ere reaching it. Perhaps he will never attain 
it, and that is sadder still. 

There are persons who speak for a whole 
hour, within sight of their subject, and yet can- 
not manage to enter upon it. Sometimes, again, 
they arrive at it when they ought to be taking 
leave of it — that is when their time is exhausted. 
Hence interminable orations which tire the 
hearer without either instructing or moving 
him; the orator wears himself out in utter 
futility, and his toil is fruitless. He has 
plunged into a quagmire ; the more he strug- 



252 ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 

gles, the deeper he sinks ; he flounders right 
and left to find his road and recover solid 
ground, and if he gains it, it is covered all over 
with the mud through which he has waded. 

Horace says — " qui bene ccepit, facti dimidium 
habet" "he who has begun well, has half done 
his work." This is perfectly applicable to the 
orator, who, after having clearly laid down his 
subject, attacks it full front, and takes up un- 
derstandingly the thread of his ideas. He has 
then nothing to do but to suffer his skiff to 
float along ; the very current will carry it on 
to the destination, and the strokes of his oars, 
and the breeze in his sails, will be so many ac- 
cessorial means of propulsion, l But if he is out 
of the current, and, still more, if he is against 
the current, should the breeze fail him or prove 
adverse, the more he rows the less he advances. 
He will lose time and trouble, and fill w T ith 
uneasiness or with pity those who watch him 
from the shore. 

But how begin well ? How find this thread 
of the deep water, this favourable current, or, 
to speak without metaphor, the leading idea by 
which a man should open, and which w 7 ill bring 
after it the others ? Can a precept be given, a 



ENTRANCE INTO SUBJECT. 253 

method prescribed for this end ? No precept, 
no method, avails anything, except in so far as 
one knows how to apply them ; and in order to 
understand them rightly, and above all, in 
order to make use of them successfully, what 
we need is good sense, intelligence, and an un- 
warped, piercing mind. A man should be able 
to discern rapidly what is to be done in the 
case which we have just described, — he must 
know how to take advantage of the rising 
breeze which can help him, and how to extri- 
cate himself from the embarrassment in which 
he is involved. There is need, in short, for 
the orator, as for any other person who has to 
face a danger or ^escape from a disadvantage, of 
both mind and presence of mind ; — things not 
to be taught. 



254 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE DEVELOPEMENT. 

The speaker should have his plan well fixed, 
not only on paper, but in his head, so as to keep 
ever present before his mind the chain of the 
thoughts, and so as to proceed successively from 
one to the other in the prescribed order of the 
exposition. ' The discourse, then, is mounted, 
as it were, in a frame from which it ought not 
to slip, under pain of digressing and diverting, 
by its deviations, the attention of the hearers 
from the subject, as a river which overflows its 
bed sweeps away whatever it meets, and spreads 
dearth and ruin where it ought to have dif- 
fused refreshment and fertility. 

Or to speak more properly, the discourse 
which thus overflows carries nothing at all with 
it except those wordy waves which beat upon 
the ears without leaving behind them a single 



THE DEVELOPEMENT. 255 

idea or moving a single feeling. Many of those 
who are anxious to speak extemporaneously, and 
who do not understand it, for want of talent or 
of preparation, are lost in this manner. The 
current of their discourse, which is not kept 
within its banks, gets every moment divided 
and loses itself in emptiness, like those rivers 
with a multiplicity of mouths, which are ab- 
sorbed by the sands. 

It is a highly important matter, then, to know 
how to confine one's-self to one's plan, — although 
one must not be such a slave to it, as to leave 
no room for the new thoughts which may occur 
at the moment. That would be to deprive one's- 
self of one of the chief advantages of extem- 
porisation, — the inspiration of the moment and 
the life it gives to the discourse. 

A man who is accustomed to speak in public 
even foresees to a certain extent, — or rather he 
has a presentiment in the matter not indeed of 
the instant at which he will have this inspira- 
tion, but of the ideas which may offer themselves 
in certain stages of the developement ; he catches 
sight of what is involved in an idea which he 
has yet only indicated. It is like a plunge of 
the sounding rod, dropped beforehand into a 



256 THE DEVELOPEMENT. 

spring, and he carefully recloses it until he shall 
require to uncover it and make it gush forth. 
He would weaken, and perhaps exhaust it, were 
he to pierce it during the preparatory portion ; 
he reserves it for the favourable moment, sure 
to find there a plentiful well when he pleases. 

But every advantage has its drawback. In 
the warmth of exposition a man is not always 
master of his own words, and when new thoughts 
arise, they may lead a long way from the sub- 
ject, to which there is sometimes a difficulty in 
returning. Hence digressions, prolixities, ap- 
pendages, which cause the main object to be 
lost to view, and wear out or render languid the 
attention of the audience. 

All who extemporise have had this misfor- 
tune Some time or other. If you do not ac- 
custom yourself to hold with a firm hand the 
thread of your thoughts, so that you can always, 
amidst the labyrinth of the discourse and the 
many mazes into which you may be drawn, re- 
cover your way, you will never come to speak 
in an endurable manner ; and even though you 
should have fine passages, the hearer will grow 
weary of your devious style, and when all | is 
said he will be neither instructed nor impressed. 



THE DEVELOPEMENT. 257 

You may dazzle him by the pomp of language, 
surprise him by ideas more or less ingenious, 
may amuse him, for a moment, by the wit and 
sparkle of your expressions ; but you will not 
suggest one idea to his mind nor instil a single 
feeling into his ear, because there will be neither 
order nor unity, and therefore no life in your 
discourse. 

It is further essential to beware of the dis- 
tractions which may break the thread of the 
exposition, and abruptly send the mind into a 
totally different and an unprepared channel. 
This is another of the dangers attending extem- 
porisation, which imperatively demands that 
you should give yourself wholly to your sub- 
ject, and thus exclude from your mind every 
extraneous image and thought ; — no easy task, 
when a man stands face to face with a nume- 
rous assembly, whose eyes from all directions 
are centred upon him, tempting him to look at 
people, were it only because people are all 
looking at him. 

On this account it is necessary that the orator 
before speaking should be collected, — he should 
be wholly absorbed in his ideas, and proof against 
the interruptions and impressions which sur- 

s 



258 THE DEVELOPEMENT. 

round him. The slightest distraction to which 
he yields may break the chain of his thoughts, 
mar his plan, and even sponge out of his mind 
the very remembrance of his subject. This 
appears incredible, and I would not believe it 
myself had I not experienced it. 

One day, I had to preach in one of the prin- 
cipal churches of Paris. It was a solemn fes- 
tival, and there was an immense audience, in- 
cluding part of the Court then reigning. As I 
was ascending the pulpit I perceived a person 
whom I had supposed absent, and my mind was 
carried away suddenly by a train of recollec- 
tions. I reached the pulpit-landing, knelt 
down as usual, and when I should have risen 
to speak, I had forgotten not only my text, 
but even the subject of my sermon. I lite- 
rally knew no longer what I had come to speak 
upon, and, despite of all my efforts to re- 
member it, I could see nothing but one com- 
plete blank. My embarrassment and anguish 
may be conceived. T remained on my knees a 
little longer than was customary, not knowing 
what to do. Nevertheless, not losing head or 
heart, I looked full at my danger without being 
scared by it, yet without seeing how I was to 



THE DEVELOPEMENT. 259 

get out of it. At last, unable to recover any- 
thing by my own proper strength, — neither 
subject nor text, — I had recourse to God, and 
I said to Him, from the very bottom of my 
heart and with all the fervour of my anxiety, — 
" Lord if it be Thy will that I preach, give me 
back my plan ;" and at that instant, my text 
came back into my mind, and with my text 
the subject. I think that never in my life 
have I experienced anything more astonishing, 
nor a more lively emotion of gratitude. 

At other times you lose while speaking the 
thread of your discourse, especially when some 
new idea crosses the mind, or if you allow 
yourself to look about among the audience. 
You generally become aware of it ere the sen- 
tence you are uttering is finished ; for when a 
man extemporises, you always see the next 
idea before you have done with its predecessor, 
and in order to advance with certainty you 
must look somewhat forward, in order to discern 
where you are going to plant your foot pre- 
sently. Suddenly, you can see nothing before 
you, and you are come to the closing member of 
your period. If you then become agitated, you 
are lost ; for anxiety, far from enabling you to 

s 2 



260 THE DEVELOPEMENT. 

recover your ideas, confuses thetn still more, 
and the more disturbed you get, the less capa- 
ble are you of retrieving your plan and re-en- 
tering the road. In these cases, you must 
calmly, under another form, with other phrases, 
resume the same thought you have just ex- 
pressed, and nearly always it recalls that which 
was lost ; it gently excites the remembrance of 
it, by virtue of the association of ideas and of 
the previous elaboration of the plan. But 
while yet speaking, you must look inwards with 
the whole sight of your mind, in order to dis- 
cern what this species of conjuration shall 
evoke, and at the slightest sign to grasp your 
idea once more. All this is not effected with- 
out perplexity or without interior tribulation. 

There are untoward days, when one is 
scarcely master of one's attention, and in spite 
of the most laborious preparation the plan re- 
fuses to fix itself in the head, or to stay there, 
escaping on one side or on the other, as in 
a sieve ; or else something comes across which 
throws you out of your way. It is often 
the effect of some physical cause ; — a nervous 
or a feverish state, arising from atmospheric 
influences, from indisposition, and anxieties of 
heart or mind. 



THE DEVELOPEMENT. 261 

In such cases there is much difficulty in 
entering upon one's plan or in keeping to it. 
Sometimes, indeed, we do not enter into it at 
all, but speak at the side of it, so to say, trying 
to catch it, and unable to overtake it, like a 
man who runs after the conveyance w r hich is to 
carry him, and who reaches the door without 
being able to open it. This is one of the most 
fatiguing situations with which I am acquainted. 
It exhausts alike the will, the mind, and the 
body ; — the will, which makes vain endeavours 
to recapture a subject perpetually evading it ; 
the mind, which struggles in a desperate 
wrestle with its own thoughts ; and the body, 
which travails, as if to compensate by exterior 
agitation for the interior activity which is de- 
ficient. 

For the greatest possible avoidance of dis- 
tractions, I will recommend a thing which I 
have always found successful — that is, not to 
contemplate the individuals who compose the 
audience, and thus not to establish a special 
understanding with any one of them. The 
short-sighted have no need of my recommen- 
dation, but it will be useful to those who see 
far, and who may be disturbed by some sudden 



262 THE DEVELOPEMENT. 

impression or some movement of curiosity. As 
for myself I carefully avoid all ocular contact, 
and I restrict myself to a contemplation of the 
audience as a whole, — keeping my looks above 
the level of the heads. Thus T see all and dis- 
tinguish nobody, so that the entire attention of 
my mind remains fastened upon my plan and 
my ideas. 

I do not, however, advise an imitation of 
Bourdaloue, who closed his eyes while de- 
livering his sermon, lest his memory should 
fail, or some distraction sweep away part of his 
discourse. It is a great disadvantage to shut 
the eyes while speaking ; for the look and its 
play are among the most effectual means of 
oratorical action. It darts fire and light, it 
radiates the most vital energy, and people un- 
derstand the orator by looking at him and 
following the play of his eyes almost as well as 
by listening to his voice and words. 



263 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 

I give this name to the moment when the 
speech produces its highest effect by piercing 
and mastering the hearer's soul either with the 
light which it imparts, or the feelings which it 
arouses. The listener is at that solemn instant 
wou, and remains passive under the influence 
which touches and vivifies. But in order to 
understand this state, it is necessary to con- 
sider closely, and in their respective relation, the 
two poles which speaking instantaneously unites 
for the achievement of its end. 

Eloquence has this peculiarity which distin- 
guishes it from other arts, that it is always 
through the intelligence it reaches the heart, — 
that is, it is by means of the idea which it en- 
genders ; and this is what makes it the most ex- 
cellent, the most profound of arts, because it 



264 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 

takes possession of the whole man and can 
neither charm, nor move, nor bear him along, 
except by enlightening him and causing him 
to think. It is not a matter of mere sensibility, 
imagination, or passion, as in music and paint- 
ing, which may produce great effects without 
thought having a predominant share in them, 
although those arts themselves have a loftier 
and a wider range in proportion as the intelli- 
gence plays a greater part, and ideas exercise 
a higher sway in their operations. 

Yet in music and in the plastic arts, ideas are 
so blended with form and so controlled by it, 
that it is very difficult to abstract them from 
it, with a view of testing their value and ana- 
lysing them; they flow with the form which is 
their vehicle, and you could scarcely translate 
them into any intelligible or precise language. 
Hence the vagueness of these arts, and particu- 
larly of music; a fact which does not prevent 
it from exercising a powerful effect at the very 
moment of the impression, which, however, 
is transient, and leaves little behind it. It 
vanishes almost as soon as the sounds which 
have produced it cease. 

In eloquence, on the contrary, the form is 



CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 265 

subordinate to the idea. In itself it possesses 
little to dazzle or to charm, — it is articulate 
language, which certainly is far less agreeable 
than language sung, or melody. However 
sonorous the voice of the speaker, it will never 
charm the ear like a musical passage, and even 
the most graceful or the most energetic orato- 
rical action can never have the elegance, har- 
mony, or finish which the painter or the 
sculptor is able to give to the bodies of the 
characters whom he represents. Notwith- 
standing which the tones and action of the 
speaker often produce astonishing effects on 
those who hear him, which are lost in reading 
what he has said, or in his written discourse. 

It follows that eloquence has its own artistic 
or sesthetical side, besides that idea which it 
is its business to convey. But it relies much 
more on the idea than do the other arts, so that 
the absence or the feebleness of the idea is 
much more felt in it, and it is impossible to be 
a great orator, without possessing a lofty intel- 
ligence and great power of thought ; whereas 
a man may be a distinguished musician, painter, 
or sculptor without any brilliant share of these 
endowments ; which amounts to this, that elo- 



266 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 

quence is the most intellectual of the arts, and 
the exercise of which requires the mightiest 
faculties of the mind. 

Whence, again, it follows, — and it is to this 
we would come, — that eloquence is the pro- 
foundest and the most difficult of arts, on 
account of the end at which it aims, which is 
not merely to charm, please, or amuse, tran- 
siently, but to penetrate into the soul, that it 
may move and change the will, may excite or 
may prevent its action by means of the ideas 
which it engenders, or, as it is expressed in 
rhetorical treatises, by convincing and per- 
suading. The true end of the orator is to make 
himself master of souls, guiding them by his 
mind, causing them to think as he thinks, and 
thus imparting to their wills the movements and 
direction of his own. 

I well know that the multitude may be 
stirred and carried away by fine phrases, by 
brilliant images, and above all by bursts of 
voice and vehement action, without any great 
amount of ideas at the root. The orator, in 
this instance, acts after the manner of music, 
which produces feelings and sometimes deeds, 
without thoughts. But what is sufficient in 



CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 267 

music is at the very utmost but half of what 
eloquence requires, and although it may indeed 
produce some effect in this way, it remains be- 
neath itself, and loses in dignity. It is sonorous 
but empty ; it is a sounding cymbal, or, if the 
comparison be liked better, it is a scenic deco- 
ration, which produces a momentary illusion, 
and leaves little behind it. 

Eloquence is not worthy of its name, and 
fulfils not its high vocation, except in so far as 
it sways the human will by intelligence, deter- 
mining its resolutions in a manner suitable to 
a rational and free being, not by mere sensible 
impressions, or by sallies of passion, but above 
all, by the aspect of truth, by convictions 
of what is just and right, that is, by the idea 
of them which it gives, or rather, which it 
ought to engender, develope, and bring to life 
in the soul. 

In a word, everything in the discourse is 
reducible to this point — that the hearer should 
be made to conceive what the orator under- 
stands, and as he understands it, in order that 
he may feel what the orator feels and will what 
he wills; in other words, that an idea should be 
engendered in the understanding of the hearer 



268 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 

similar to the idea of the speaker, in order that 
their hearts as well as their minds may be in 
unison. There lies the difficulty, and they 
who can overcome it are indeed eloquent. 

But there are many things required for this, 
— or, to put it in another way, there are, in 
the operation which the orator has to effect, 
several stages or degrees which are known to 
all who speak in public, or of which at least 
they have had experience, even if they have 
not categorically explained them to themselves. 

The first stage is that in which the audience 
is won, — the speaker commands it. 

The second is that in which his address 
enters the hearer's soul, and makes him con- 
ceive the idea. 

The third is like the organisation of this 
conception. 

The hearer who has conceived the idea makes 
one with the orator in mind and will — there is 
but one soul between them, — it is the com- 
pletion of the work by which the speaker takes 
possession of him whom he has moved and con- 
vinced. 

Let us consider these three stages. 

To win the hearer is to seize his attention, 



CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 269 

and so to fix it that he shall listen without 
effort, and even with pleasure to what is said, 
opening his mind for its reception and absorp- 
tion, to the exclusion of every other thought, 
image, or sensation which may arise. Now 
this capture of mind by a discourse is no easy 
matter, and it sometimes requires a considerable 
time and sustained exertions to obtain it. At 
other times, it is effected at once, at the first 
words, whether on account of the confidence 
inspired by the speaker, or of the lively interest 
of the subject and the curiosity which it ex- 
cites, or for whatever reason else. It is hard to 
give a recommendation in this respect, seeing the 
great diversity of circumstances which may in 
this case exercise a favourable or an adverse in- 
fluence ; but this we may safely assert, that you 
must attain this point in order to produce any 
impression by your speech. 

There are few who know how to listen ; it 
presupposes a great desire for instruction, and 
therefore a consciousness of ignorance, and a 
certain mistrust of self, which springs from mo- 
desty or humility, — the rarest of virtues. Be- 
sides, listening demands a certain strength of 
will, which makes a person capable of directing 



270 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 

the mind to one point and there to keep it 
despite of every distraction. Even when you 
are alone with a serious book, what trouble you 
have in concentrating your attention so as to 
comprehend what you are reading. And if 
the perusal be protracted, what a number of 
things escape and have to be read over again ! 
What will it not be, then, in the midst of a 
crowd in which you are assailed on all hands by 
a variety of impressions ? 

Besides, each individual comes with a dif- 
ferent disposition, with different anxieties or 
with prejudices in proportion to age, condition, 
and antecedents. Imagine several hundreds, 
several thousands, of persons in an audience, 
and you have as many opinions as there are 
heads, as many passions as there are interests 
and situations, and in all this great crowd few 
agree in thoughts, feelings, and desires. Each 
muses on this matter or on that, desires one 
thing or another, has such or such preposses- 
sions ; when lo ! in the midst of all these diver- 
gences, of all these contrarieties, I rise, a 
man, mount pulpit or platform, and have to 
make all attend in order to make all think, feel, 
and will, just as I do. Truly it is a stupen- 



CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 271 

dous task, and one which cannot be achieved 
except by a power almost above humanity. 

Rhetoricians say that the exordium should 
be devoted to this purpose. It is at the outset 
that you should endeavour to captivate the 
mind and to attach it to the subject, either by 
forcibly striking it by surprise, as in the exor- 
dium ex ahr-upto, or in dexterously winning 
goodwill, as in the exordium " of insinuation." 
All this is true, but the precept is not easy 
to reduce to practice. It is tantamount to 
saying that in order to make a good begin- 
ning a great power, or a great adroitness, 
in speaking is required. Who shall give us 
this ? 

The first moments of the discourse are gene- 
rally very difficult to the orator, not only on 
account of the trouble he experiences in setting 
out, in laying down and developeing his subject, 
as we just now showed, but also on account of 
the necessity of making his audience set out ; 
and here he meets at starting, either the re- 
sistance of inertness, the indolence loth to take 
the pains of listening, or else the levity w T hich 
flies off each instant, or else the latent or the 
express opposition of some adverse prejudice, 



272 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 

or interest. He has, therefore, to wrestle with 
his hearer in order to overcome him, and in 
this he is not always successful. 

Until everybody has taken his place and 
settled himself well in it, and coughed, and 
made a stir as long as he decently can in his 
situation, the poor orator speaks more or less 
in the midst of noise, or at least of a half-re- 
pressed disturbance, which hinders his words 
from having any effect upon the mind. They 
penetrate nowhere, they return to him, and he is 
tempted to give way to discouragement, especi- 
ally in large assemblies, as at a sermon. If he 
waver, he is undone, he will never become master 
of his hearers, and his discourse will be powerless. 

What will sustain him is, first of all, a lively 
sense of the mission intrusted to him, of the 
duty he has to fulfil, — and, in the next place, 
that something which is peculiar to the strong- 
man, and by which he derives incitement from 
opposition or difficulty, and enthusiasm from the 
strife. The greater the resistance, the greater 
the endeavour to prevail ; — it is one of valour's 
spurs in the conflict. Again, what is very 
useful in this emergency is the authority 
of speech which soon asserts a kind of 



CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 273 

ascendancy over the hearer, — a sympathetic 
something in the voice which pleases the ear 
and reaches the heart, or else a certain pun- 
gency of pronunciation and accent which wins 
the attention. 

By these means, and those of which we be- 
fore spoke, and above all by help from on high, 
you succeed more or less quickly in seizing 
your audience, in commanding it, in winning 
it, in chaining it, to your discourse, so that all 
minds, rallying in a common attention, converge 
towards a single point, and appear to hang on 
the speaker's lips, while all eyes are fixed upon 
him. Then is established that solemn stillness 
upon which the life of the speaker is condi- 
tional. No more fidgetings on chair or bench ; 
no more throat-clearing ; even colds are cured 
as if by magic, and in the absence of all noisy 
sounds, there is nothing to be heard save the 
respiration of the audience and the voice of the 
orator, as it arises, prevails, and diffuses itself. 
The assembly is won — it listens. 

Secondly. — Now alone can be achieved the 
task of eloquence, which is to engender in the 
hearer the requisite idea, so as to make him 
conceive and feel what it enunciates. 



274 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 

Here, as in all conceptions, there are two 
poles, the one active, which transmits life, the 
other passive, which conceives by admitting it ; 
and conception is effected by their interpene- 
tration. Such is the operation when all looks 
are bent, strained, towards the orator, every 
mind is open to welcome and absorb his words 
with all its powers, and those words sink into 
and fertilise it by their virtue. It is thus that 
ideas are produced by instruction, which is a 
real fertilisation and a nourishment of the in- 
telligence ; for " man lives not by bread alone, but 
by every word of truth" 

This is the most momentous period of the 
discourse, what w r e term the crisis, or supreme 
effort of speaking ; it is truth itself, it is He 
who calls Himself " the way, the truth, and the 
life," who, by the mouth of His minister, acts 
upon the soul, pierces it, and makes a settle- 
ment therein, that it may become as a throne 
where He loves to sit, as a sanctuary which He 
is pleased to inhabit, as a mirror in which He 
reflects Himself with predilection, as a torch 
by which He desires to shine and to diffuse 
His light. 

In the physical world wherever there is the 



CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 275 

communication and reproduction of life, it is 
also the Living God who acts ; whereas the 
men, the animals, and the plants which are 
employed in this great operation, are merely 
organs and implements in the work. This is 
why the gospel declares that there is but one 
Father, He from whom all paternity is derived 
in heaven and on earth ; as He alone is good, 
because He is the source of every good, and 
He alone is Master and Lord, because He is 
truth. 

It is just the same, and for still greater 
reason, in the moral world, or in the communi- 
cation of intellectual life. It is an operation 
performed according to the same laws, — and 
on this account, he who instructs or effects a 
mental genesis (the true meaning of the word 
"instruct"), — that person also is a father in- 
tellectually, and it is the noblest and most pro- 
lific species of paternity. 

Such is the sublime mission of the orator, 
such the high function which he discharges. 
When he circulates a living word, it is a trans- 
mission of life, it is a reproduction and multi- 
plication of truth in the souls of others whom 
he intellectually vivifies, as a father his off- 

t 2 



276 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 

spring according to the flesh. As He, whose 
image and instrument he is, diffuses His light, 
warmth, and life over all creatures, so the 
orator, filled with inspiration, instils upon the 
spot into thousands of hearers the light of his 
word, the warmth of his heart, and the life of 
his soul. He fertilises all these intelligences 
at once ; and this is why, as soon as the rays 
of his discourse have entered them and im- 
parted to them the new conception, they make 
but one soul with him, and he is master of that 
soul, and pours into it virtue from on high. 

They all live in unison at that important 
moment, identified by the words which have 
mastered them. 

This critical instant of the discourse, when 
the supreme effort of eloquence is achieved, is 
accordingly marked by the profoundest emotion 
of which men are susceptible, that which always 
attends the communication of life, and in this 
case by so much the more replete with happi- 
ness as the life of the intellect is more pure, 
and less remote from Him who is its source. 
Hence that exquisite feeling, to which no other 
is to be compared, which the orator experiences 
when his words enter into and vivify the minds 



CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 277 

of his audience ; and hence also the sweet im- 
pressions of which these last are conscious 
when they receive the spirit of the word and 
by it are nourished. 

Thirdly. — When the orator has thus pene- 
trated into the hearer's soul by the radiation of his 
speech, animating that soul with its life, he be- 
comes master of it, impresses, moves, and turns it 
at will, without effort, in the simplest manner, by 
a word, a gesture, an exclamation, nay silence 
itself. The fact is, he possesses the hearer's 
heart ; it is open to him, and there is between 
them an intimate communication which has 
scarcely any further need of exterior means. 
Thus it is with two persons who love each 
other dearly, and who have confidence in each 
other; they understand each other, without 
speaking, and the feeling which animates and 
unites them is so intimate and so sweet that 
language is powerless to express it, and they 
need it no longer to make themselves mutually 
understood. 

Everything, then, is in the orator's power 
when he has thus won his audience, and he 
ought to take advantage of this power which is 
given to him temporarily, to complete his work, 



278 CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 

and to develope and organise in the minds of the 
listeners the idea to which he has given birth ; 
this is the third stage of his undertaking. 

Strike the iron while it is hot, says the pro- 
verb. In the present instance there is something 
more than iron and better than iron to forge 
and fashion ; there is the young life which elo- 
quence has called forth to develope, in order 
that the conceived idea may take shape in the 
understanding, and influence the will — partly 
through the emotion which it has produced, and 
partly through the intellectual views which 
furnish the will with motives, as feeling and 
passion supply it with incentives. Eloquence 
would miss its aim, if it failed to lead the hearer 
to some act by which the idea is to be realised. 

It is in this last stage, then, that the prac- 
tical part of the discourse should be placed 
along with the application of deductions. In 
these must the speaker reap the fruits of his 
labour. After having imparted his feelings 
and thoughts to the listener, he must also make 
them partakers of his will. He must imprint 
his personality upon them, fashion them in his 
resemblance, so that they shall feel, think, and 
will as he does, in the interest of that truth 



CRISIS OF THE DISCOURSE. 279 

and excellence of which he has brought home 
to them the manifestation. He must not take 
leave of his audience till he has touched, con- 
vinced, and carried it away. It is in the pero- 
ration, as we are about to see, that the seal 
must be set to the work, and that it must receive 
its plenary completeness. 



280 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE CLOSE OF THE DISCOURSE, OR THE 
PERORATION. 

If it be difficult to begin an extemporary 
discourse, it is still more difficult to finish it 
well. Most orators spoil their speeches by 
lengthiness, and prolixity is the principal dis- 
advantage of extemporaneous speaking. In 
it, more than in any other, we want time to be 
brief, and there is a perpetual risk of being 
carried away by the movement of the thoughts 
or the expressions. 

It sometimes happens, unfortunately, that you 
have barely entered upon your subject when 
you should end it ; and then, with a confused 
feeling of all that you have omitted, and a sense 
of what you might still say, you are anxious to 
recover lost ground in some degree, and you 



THE CONCLUSION. 281 

attempt to develope some new idea when you 
ought to be concluding. This tardy and 
unseasonable, yet crude after-growth, has the 
very worst effect upon the audience which, 
already fatigued, becomes impatient and listens 
no longer. The speaker loses his words and 
his trouble, and everything which he adds 
by way of elucidating or corroborating what 
he has said, spoils what has gone before, 
destroying the impression of it. It is a less 
evil to terminate abruptly than to weary the 
attention. 

The bored hearer becomes almost an enemy. 
He can no longer attend, and yet, at that mo- 
ment, he is unable to think of anything else. 
His mind is like an overladen stomach which 
requires rest, and into which additional aliment 
is thrust despite of its distaste and repugnance ; 
it needs not much to make it rise, rebel, and 
disgorge the whole of what it has received. An 
unseasonable or awkward speaker inflicts a 
downright torture on those who are compelled 
to hear him, a torture that may amount to 
sickness or a nervous paroxysm. Such is the 
state into which a too lengthy discourse, and 



282 THE CONCLUSION. 

above all, a never-ending peroration, plunge 
the audience. It is easy to calculate the 
dispositions which it inspires and the fruit it 
produces. 

Sometimes — and I humbly confess that I here 
speak from experience — the orator is still more 
unfortunate, if that were possible. He wants 
to finish, and no longer knows how, like a man 
who seeks to quit a house in danger, and finds 
all the doors shut ; he runs right and left to 
discover an escape, and strikes against dead 
walls. Meanwhile time presses, and the im- 
patience of the public betrays itself by a re- 
pressed disturbance, some rising to go away, 
some moving on their seats to relieve themselves, 
while a confused hum ascends towards the 
speaker, — a too certain token that he is no 
longer attended to, and that he is speaking to 
the air, which fact only increases his agitation 
and perplexity. At last, as everything has an 
end in this world, he reaches his conclusion 
after some fashion or other, and war- weary, 
either by catching hold of the common-place 
wind-up about eternal life, should he be preach- 
ing, or, under other circumstances, by some 



THE CONCLUSION. 283 

panting period which has the air of expressing 
a feeling or a thought, and which, in nine cases 
out often, fills the ear with sonorous and empty- 
words. And thus the poor orator who could do 
better, and who is conscious that he has done 
ill, retires, with lowly mien, much confused, and 
vowing, though rather late, that they shall not 
catch him in that way any more. 

Alas ! yet again, perhaps, he shall be caught, 
even after the most laborious preparation; 
for there is nothing so fitful as eloquence. It 
needs but an omission, a distraction to break 
the thread of the ideas and launch you into 
void or darkness, and then you grope in a 
forest, or rather struggle amid a chaos. It is a 
true oratorical discomfiture and rout; and I 
have remarked that it happens most when an 
orator is most sure of himself and hopes to 
produce the greatest effect. These are lessons 
which He, who exalts the humble and abases 
the proud, is pleased occasionally to give to 
public speakers, so prone to be elated by 
success and to ascribe to themselves its credit 
and its glory. Happy are they if they profit 
by them. 



284 THE CONCLUSION. 

There is a way of concluding which is the 
most simple, the most rational, and the 
least generally adopted. True, it gives little 
trouble and affords no room for pompous 
sentences, and that is why so many despise 
it, and do not even give it a thought. It 
consists merely of winding up by a rapid 
recapitulation of the whole discourse, present- 
ing in sum what has been developed in the 
various parts, so as to enunciate only the 
leading ideas with their connection ; — a 
process which gives the opportunity of a 
nervous and lively summary, foreshortening 
all that has been stated, and making the 
remembrance and profitable application of it 
easy. 

And since you have spoken to gain some 
point, to convince and persuade your hearer, 
and thus influence his will by impressions and 
considerations, and finally by some paramount 
feeling which must give the finishing stroke 
and determine him to action, the epitome of 
the ideas must be itself strengthened, and, as it 
were, rendered living by a few touching words, 
which inspirit the feeling in question at the 



THE CONCLUSION. 285 

last moment, so that the convinced and af- 
fected auditor shall be ready to do what he is 
is required. 

Such, in my mind, is the best peroration, 
because it is alike the most natural and the 
most efficacious. It is the straight aim of the 
discourse, and as it issues from the subject and 
from the direct intention of the speaker, it goes 
right to the soul of the listener and places the 
two in unison at the close. 

I am aware that you may, and with success, 
adopt a different mode of concluding, either 
by some pungent things which you reserve for 
your peroration, and which tend to maintain to 
the last and even to reawaken the attention of 
the audience ; or else by well-turned periods 
which flatter the ear and excite all sorts of 
feelings, more or less analogous to the subject. 
Undoubtedly there are circumstances in which 
these oratorical artifices are in keeping, and 
may prove advantageous or agreeable ; I do 
not reject them, for in war all means, not con- 
demned by humanity and honour, and capable 
of procuring victory, are allowable, — and public 
speaking is a real conflict ; I merely depose 



286 THE CONCLUSION. 

that the simplest method is also the best, and 
that the others, belonging more to art than 
to nature, are rather in the province of rhetoric 
than of true eloquence. 



287 



CHAPTER XXV. 

AFTER THE DISCOURSE. 

It should seem as if all had been said, once 
the discourse is concluded; and yet we will 
add a few words on the physical and moral in- 
terest of the speaker, we will point out to him 
various precautions which may appear futile to 
certain persons, and may prove serviceable to 
others ; at least we have always found our own 
account in having adopted them. 

On quitting the pulpit, the platform, or any 
other place where you have been speaking for 
a considerable time and with animation, you 
should try to remain quiet for a while in order 
to recompose yourself gradually, and to allow 
the species of fever which has excited and con- 
sumed you to subside. The head particularly 
needs rest, — for nothing is so fatiguing to it as 
extemporaneous speaking, which brings into 



288 THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 

play all the faculties of the mind, strains them 
to the uttermost, and thus causes a powerful 
determination of blood to the brain. More- 
over, the nervous system, which is ancillary to 
it, is strongly agitated, — it requires tranquil- 
lising, — and the w T hole body, violently agitated 
as it has been by the oratorical delivery, re- 
requires repose ; and this, a slight doze, if it 
be possible to obtain one, will afford better 
than any other means. 

The vocal organs which have just been ex- 
ercised to excess, ought to be kept unem- 
ployed; and therefore great care should be 
taken, — if indeed the inconvenience can be 
avoided, — not to receive visits or hold conver- 
sations. In the fatigue of the moment, any 
new effort, however small, is prejudicial, and 
takes away more strength than the most vio- 
lent exertions at another time. The first thing 
to do in this state is to return thanks to God 
for the danger escaped, and for the help re- 
ceived, even when you fancy that you have 
not achieved the success which you desire. 
Public speaking is so hazardous a thing, that one 
never knows what will be the issue of it, and 
in nothing is assistance from above so really 
necessary. 



THE DISCOURSE ENBED. 289 

He who feels the importance and the clanger 
of speaking, who has any notion of what the 
orator ought to be, any notion of all that he 
needs to accomplish his task, the obstacles he 
must surmount, the difficulties he must over- 
come, and, on the other hand, how slight a matter 
suffices to overthrow or paralyse him, — he who 
understands all this can well conceive also that 
he requires to be breathed upon from on high 
in order to receive the inspiration, the light, 
the fire, which shall make his discourse living 
and efficacious. For all life comes from Him 
who is life itself, life infinite, life eternal, inex- 
haustible, and the life of the mind more than 
that of the body, since God is spirit. It is but 
just, therefore, to pay Him homage for what 
He has vouchsafed to give us, and to refer to Him 
at the earliest moment the fruit or glory of 
what we have received. This is the more fitting, 
because there is nothing more intoxicating than 
the success of eloquence ; and in the elation 
which its power gives, owing to a consciousness 
of strength, and the visible influence which it 
exercises over our fellow- creatures, it is natu- 
rally prone to exalt a man in his own con- 
ceit, and leads him to ascribe to himself, 

u 



290 THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 

directly or indirectly, wholly or partially, the 
effect produced. We should beware of these 
temptations of pride, these illusions of vanity, 
which are invariably fatal to true talent. 

Within measure, it is allowable to rejoice 
at what we have achieved, and in the great 
relief which is experienced after speaking. 
I know nothing equal to this sense of relief, 
especially when we think that the task has not 
been unworthily performed. 

There is a sort of infantine joy at being 
delivered from a difficult task, or disencum- 
bered of a heavy burden. Labour weighs 
hard upon all the children of Adam, even on 
those who feel most its necessity, and we 
instinctively shun it to the utmost. Besides 
which, rest after sharp fatigue is delicious, 
and particularly after the labours of the mind. 
Socrates, the son of a midwife, used to say 
that he continued the occupation of his 
mother; but it was in the mental order, by 
means of his interrogatories and dialectics, 
and hence the eristic method. One may say, 
then, with the wisest of the Greeks, that the 
delivery of a discourse in public is the pro- 
duction of an intellectual offspring ; and very 



THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 291 

fortunate it is when that offspring is not 
dead or unlikely to live. To conceive an 
idea, to organise it in a plan vigorously 
meditated, and to carry this mental progeny 
for more or less time in the understanding, 
and then when matured to give it to the 
light amidst the dangers and the throes of 
public speaking, this is an exertion which pro- 
duces immense relief and a very great satis- 
faction when it succeeds. And truly, how light 
one feels after a speech, and how comfortable 
the relaxation of mind and body after the ex- 
treme tension which has wrung all the springs 
and exhausted all the exertions of one's vital 
power ! None can know it, save him who has 
experienced it. 

After this comes a feeling at once higher and 
deeper, that of duty accomplished, of a task 
honourably fulfilled, one of the sweetest joys 
of conscience. Finally, another feeling raises 
us in our own estimation even while inspiring 
us with humility, that of being an instrument 
of truth to make it known to men as far as our 
weakness allows, and of having given testimony 
to it at the cost of some sacrifices, or at least 
of our toil and sweat. You are never more 

u 2 



292 THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 

closely united with Truth than when you are 
announcing it with conviction and devotedness. 
When you are called to proclaim it solemnly, 
it reveals itself or makes itself felt in a manner 
quite peculiar, and, as Bossuet says, with sudden 
illuminations. He who instructs others derives 
more profit than those whom he teaches, and 
receives more light than he imparts. This is 
why teaching is the best method of learning. 

From these mingled sentiments results a 
state full of sweetness, especially if you believe 
that you have succeeded, and in general your 
own feeling does not deceive you in this 
respect. Still, illusion is possible, w T hether 
for good or ill, because the true orator, who 
always needs inspiration, never has a very 
clear consciousness of what he has done, or 
rather of what has been done by him. God 
alone, who inspires him, illumines the minds 
of the hearers by His light, and changes their 
hearts by His grace. Now God frequently 
employs the weakest instruments, apparently, 
to touch the soul, as He has renewed the face 
of the world by what, in the eyes of human 
wisdom, were the meanest and most foolish of 
mankind. 



THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 293 

Thus, a discourse with which a speaker is 
dissatisfied, because it has fallen short of his 
idea and of his plan, has produced a profound 
impression and has subjugated every listener; 
whereas another, with which he was delighted, 
and which he thought highly effective, has 
produced nothing save his own fruitless exulta- 
tion, and too often an augmentation of his 
vain-glory. Here, as in everything, the Al- 
mighty is absolute : — He sports with the desires, 
efforts, and opinions of men, and makes them 
instrumental, according to His good pleasure, 
in the manifestation of truth, and the promo- 
tion of the designs of His justice or His mercy. 

Let no speaker, then, too much disquiet 
himself as to the effect he may have produced 
and the results of his discourse ; let him leave 
all this in the hands of God, whose organ he 
is, and let him beseech Him to make some- 
thing accrue from it to His glory, if success 
have been achieved ; or if he have had the mis- 
fortune to fail, to make good out of this evil 
come, as it belongs to the Divine Power to do, 
and to that power alone. 

Above all, let him not canvass this person 
and that inquisitively concerning what their 



294 THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 

feelings were in hearing him, and their opinion 
of his discourse and his manner. All such 
questions seek a motive for self-love, rather 
than any useful hints ; they are an indirect 
way of going in quest of praise and admiration, 
and may be carried to a very abject extent, in 
order to obtain consideration, criticising one's 
own performance merely to elicit a contrary 
verdict — tricks and subterfuges of vanity, which 
begs its bread in the meanest quarters, and 
which in its excessive craving for flattery, chal- 
lenges applause and extorts eulogy. This 
wretched propensity is so inborn in human na- 
ture, since original sin, that frequently the 
greatest orators are not proof against this little- 
ness, which abuses them in the eyes of God 
and man. Besides, it is a way of exposing 
oneself to cruel disappointments. 

At length when the speaker is sufficiently 
rested, and has become more calm, next day, 
for instance, let him review his plan while his 
recollections are still new, in order to correct 
and perfect it by the side of what lie has 
actually said, either rectifying the succession 
of the ideas, if necessary, or adding those 
which have occurred to him while speaking. 



THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 295 

It will be so much gained for some future 
speech on the same plan. 

If the discourse has been really successful, 
and he feels inclined, let him write according 
to his plan as he has spoken, and thus he will 
compose a finished, after having delivered an 
extemporaneous, production. Great orators 
have in this manner written several of their 
orations subsequently, — Cicero, Bossuet, and 
others. In this case, the surest method is 
to have a short-hand writer who shall supply 
you with the whole of what you have said, and 
whose reports you can use, so as to preserve 
whatever vivid or striking things the spoken 
words possessed. 

This is a labour which we have often exe- 
cuted, always with advantage, and never with- 
out a feeling of humility. For unless you 
have verified it, you can hardly form an idea 
how wretched upon paper looks the most easy, 
the most elegant extemporaneous address, even 
that which produced the greatest effect at the 
moment itself; and how very much it admits of 
improvement in point of style and readableness. 
That is w r hy orators of mark, and even of the 
highest order, whose quivering and action- 



296 THE DISCOURSE ENDED. 

heated eloquence moves and overcomes any 
assembly, vanish, as it were, on being perused ; 
so that on seeing the reckoning of their extem- 
poraneous harangues, divested of the accents 
of their voice, the play of their physiognomy, 
and their gestures, you ask yourself with 
amazement how such a discourse could have 
produced an effect so wondrous. It is that 
speaking and writing are not the same thing; 
people do not write as they speak, and fre- 
quently he who speaks the best knows nothing 
about writing, just as the ablest writer is not 
always the most capable of speaking. 

Our modest task is over; for we had, we 
repeat, no pretention of composing a treatise 
on the art of speaking; our single object was 
to transfer the results of our experience to 
those whose calling it is to speak in public. 
These very simple counsels, we hope, may 
prove useful to some, either by sparing them 
trials which are always painful, even when 
they are productive of fruit, or by showing 
them a more easy process than their own, or a 
surer way. 

However this may be, we warn them at 
parting that those alone can derive any benefit 



CONCLUSION. 297 

from our remarks, who shall have received from 
nature the gift of eloquence, and whom God, 
who is the Word by pre-eminence, shall assist 
by His grace in the management of this for- 
midable weapon, this two-edged sword, for the 
manifestation of truth, the fulfilment of His 
designs among men, and the renewal of the 
world. 



And now, my little book, go forth ; it is time 
you quit the paternal roof, he who is to pre- 
sent you in the world awaits you. I have 
done my best to enable you to make a suitable 
appearance there ; the all-decisive moment of 
separation has come, we must say farewell to 
one another. Dear offspring of my aged days, 
my heart throbs at parting with you, not merely 
with fear at what may betide you on the 
journey, weak as you still are, and about 
to face so many dangers, but with grief at 
leaving you, after having reared and formed you 
with so much care, the object so long of my 
solicitude and partiality. Image of myself, 
you recalled to me my youthful years, and, 



298 CONCLUSION. 

amidst daily business and anxiety, you have 
often been a source to me of delight and 
consolation. It was a continual pleasure to 
watch your growth and gradual formation ; 
your infancy cheered my solitude and charmed 
my hours of leisure. But our children belong 
not to us ; they are God's, who has intrusted 
them to us for His glory. Go forth, then, and 
labour, if possible, for the glory of Him who is 
the Giver of every perfect gift, and bestowed 
life upon you. 

Yet still, dear offspring, one w T ord of advice 
as we part : never forget the mediocrity of 
your station, and the humble form in which I 
send you into the world. Let your modesty 
equal your littleness, and do not seek to make 
a noise or to shed forth any lustre. Your 
destiny is to be useful and not to shine. Try 
to do some good as you pass along, and do not 
be diverted from your object by the obstacles 
or contradictions you may encounter. All who 
meet you will not look on you with a favourable 
eye. Some when they see you appear beside 
them will be indignant at your audacity, and 
will hinder your progress ; others more skilful, 
without being more benevolent, will refuse 



CONCLUSION. 299 

their aid to you because you are not of their 
country ; and will pretend not to perceive you. 
Be not angry, but proceed on your way with 
simplicity, and if you have the good fortune to 
meet, as I hope you may, some charitable soul, 
who will take an interest in your youth and 
help you forward, accept his assistance with 
gratitude, and profit by his hints and advice, 
so as to reach the goal more safely, and to per- 
fect yourself. 

Friendly reader, whoever you are, who love 
what is true and right above all things, without 
party spirit or acceptance of persons, should 
you meet this poor little child on the high road 
of the world, I recommend it to your benevo- 
lence ) and you will not meet with ingratitude. 



THE END. 



LONDON I 
FEINTED BY G. J. PALMER, 27, LAMB'S CONDUIT STREET. 



